Discovering Blogs - 3. Tour of a blog

Here is a quick tour of how to find your way round a blog. Most of you will be comfortable browsing through a blog but some may not know that there are useful tools in the sidebars to help you explore other parts of the blog beyond the front page and also that can take you to other interesting communities of blogs.

The content of blogs are laid out in reverse date order with the most recent post (or article) at the top of the main page.

Posts - the main posts are set out in the main body of a blog. There’ll be a heading or title and then you will be able to see who wrote them either just under that or at the end of the post. You’ll also usually be able to see the date and time when they were uploaded. You may sometimes see “permalink” at the bottom of the post - clicking on that takes you to the specific page of that particular post.

Comments - you can add your comment or response to a post by clicking on “Comments” at the bottom of that particular post. You’ll be taken to the permalink page ie the page of that particular post and there’ll be a box for you to write your comment. I find that some comments can be as interesting as the post itself, especially if there’s a good discussion going amongst the commenters.

Sidebar(s) - the sidebar is where you will find opportunities to explore other parts of the blog and also links to other websites. Sometimes, there’ll be additional information about what books the author is reading or what music they are listening to. Sometimes, there are interactive “widgets” ie little applications that allow you to leave voice messages or view photographs or see who else is browsing the blog at the same time etc.

Categories - these can be found on the sidebar. They collect together posts on the same theme. Sometimes, they are called labels or tags.

Archives - this section takes you to the archived posts, sorted by date. I like to look back at the very first few posts of a blog to see when the author started and what their hopes and objectives were when they first started out blogging.

Links - this section in the sidebar sets out links to other blogs or websites that the author likes. Sometimes, also called a “blogroll”.

Search - there’s usually a blank box for searching the blog. Just type in a keyword and click on “search” - it’ll bring up all the posts that contain those keywords.

Subscribe - this section tell you how you can subscribe to the blog. (See Keeping Track of the Blogs You Like for more details about subscribing to blogs)

Networks & Communities - this section is usually at the end of the sidebar and shows the communities and networks that the author is linked to. Clicking on the “badges” ie the small icons and pictures in that section can take you to those wider communities where you can find other blogs eg Britblogs is a directory of UK based blogs.

Further reading

Beginners Guide

Photo: thanks to nalilo at flickr.com