If you’ve ever wanted a great example of how wide the gulf is between people who use the Web a lot and those who don’t, take 10 from each group and ask each person what blogging is. Based on my informal survey, the numbers were roughly eight and zero from each group, respectively.

For those that live to blog, forgive the following explanation if you feel it’s a bit basic. For those that have no idea what the word means, here we go. Taken directly from blogger.com, the following is the most succinct yet complete definition for the word I’ve come across:

“A blog is a Web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically — like a what’s new page or a journal. The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly — from links and commentary about other Web sites, to news about a company/person/idea, to diaries, photos, poetry, mini-essays, project updates, even fiction.”

Democratic technique

Another way to define a Weblog, or blog, is by calling it a frequently updated column by a professional — or more frequently, non-professional — columnist. There are literally thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of blogs on the Internet today.

Blogging has become a tremendously democratic technique for posting Web content. Before blogs, posting Web content was left largely to those with a reasonable degree of technical skill.

Leveling the field

Blogging levels the field. In terms of price, blogging software costs users much less than popular Web authoring tools such as Microsoft Front Page or Macromedia Dreamweaver.

Indeed, blogging’s very nature requires it to be as easy as possible, since posting entries is a blogger’s primary goal.

At this point, many columnists would make sure to counsel you on the various steps to determine whether you need a blog, giving you planning tips and advice on how often you may want to update it.

But if you spend any time examining blogs, you will see that a good amount of them are near obsessive in the amount of detail they contain. So really, who am I to tell you that you don’t need to inform the world what you ate for lunch yesterday and how good it was? Blog away.

Cautionary note

With that said, one note of caution: Remember to clearly separate your work-oriented Web site from your personal blogging page. Even though you’re blogging, the rules of libel still apply and you might be placing your employer at potential risk depending on the unique circumstances of each particular case.

That’s the approach followed by those journalists who blog as part of their professional duties. These writers find blogging gives them a more frequent outlet for spur-of-the-moment thoughts or reactions, as opposed to the more formal construction of a weekly column.

But they still practice responsible journalism while they blog.

Hosting option

If you decide to give blogging an attempt, you may want to try one of the online, fully hosted sites that cater to this kind of activity. A couple of the more widely known, www.blogger.com and www.bloggingnetwork.com, offer free introductory trials and can also support users with more enhanced features and additional storage.

Blogger.com, for example, offers a “pro” service for $35 per year that gives users 100k of capacity each month.

Of course, the URL addresses of these hosted sites will be different than your own site. Sometimes they’re quite long so it’s best to link to them by using a name (such as naming the link “my Weblog”) and hiding the actual URL from the user.

If you value the content of your blogs, make sure to have a backup, even if it’s nothing more than periodically cutting and pasting large chunks of your entries into a large Word document, or organizing a series of documents by week. It’s easy to get complacent and trust Web services 100 percent, but data can always be lost and the vast majority of service contracts you will sign make no promises of eventual recovery in case of failure.

If you find remotely hosted sites are crimping your style, or you just want more customization than may be available, you can try hosting a blogging application yourself. You may be able to purchase and install one at your company’s site, or through a local Internet service provider. A couple of the more widely used ones are Radio UserLand (http://radio.userland.com) and Movable Type (http://movabletype.org).

Blogging is really changing the face of content management today. Many people are finding that blogging applications can handle their Web site needs just fine, and developers are making enhancements continuously, adding things like image hosting and even page-creation tools so people can create profile and hobby pages.

As a final thought, if you’re ever thinking about running for political office or any other highly visible public or private position, blog with care. You just know somewhere there’s a computer running an archive of every blog ever written, and it’s sure to show up and bite you when you are least expecting it.s

Hays Goodman is the webmaster for Newspapers & Technology and gmtoday.com, a Milwaukee-area portal. He has been involved in professional Internet development for five years, and welcomes your comments, feedback and suggestions for future Tips & Tricks columns. Write to him at webmaster@conleynet.com and include your contact information.