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In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, many New Yorkers living and working around the World Trade Center started keeping online journals that detailed their experiences. The combination of personal introspection and eyewitness accounts in these blogs drew millions of readers. That's the idea of blogs: the personal made public. It's a new way to communicate, and it's catching on fast.

Once the pastime of only dedicated Internet surfers and amateur writers, blogs (short for Weblogs) have become mainstream. More people than ever are getting news, information, and opinions from them. Similarly, blog writers are becoming more diverse, including traditional journalists, soldiers in the field, citizens in a disaster area or war zone, and average people yearning to express themselves. In many cases, content can be compelling because it is so personal and timely.

The tools necessary to write and maintain blogs have become so easy to use that almost anyone can set up a basic blog in a few minutes. Even feature-rich, custom blog sites are relatively simple to build and maintain. The tricky parts, in fact, aren't technical, and they have more to do with finding the time and a reason to keep a blog, getting it noticed by others, and finding your voice and audience.

Something for Everyone

The classic blog is fairly simple: a regularly updated Web page, with the most recent content at the top of the page, and each entry is date-stamped. Usually, blogging software automatically formats the site and keeps track of the entries, the page layout, and all the HTML coding. Within this basic framework, three different types of blogs have emerged.

The first type is the microjournal. With blogging tools, you can easily bang out a couple of sentences, such as "10:32 A.M., April 1, 2003. I just fed the cat," and get them online fast. At first, thousands of people did just that. Though tedious to read, such blogs helped refine the art of blogging to something more meaningful.

The second type of blog is the notebook, which tends to feel like a journal or diary, with essay-size entries. People interested in getting the word out about their situations like to write these, and major news organizations are starting to cite them as sources in stories, or at least as indicators of certain trends.

The third type is the filter, which usually starts with a hypertext link to another page. Then the blog writer posts an opinion of the linked material, which can be anything from a short tip of the hat to a long, angry treatise. Although the first two types of blogs are fairly introspective, a filter blog is extroverted, pointing to sites, concepts, ideas, and products that its author thinks you should know about. In some ways, filter blogs act as miniature Web portals.

Getting Started

Want to add your voice to the chorus? No problem. Creating and maintaining a blog can be as easy as signing up for a free account and starting to type. Alternatively, if you already have a Web server, you can host your blog on your own with no programming required.

The simplest method is to sign up with a blogging service provider, such as Blogger (www.blogger.com), where you can literally start a blog in 2 minutes. You create a user name and password, enter a description of your blog, and select a visual theme from a list (don't worry, you can change it all later). Then you choose a URL and start typing your first entry. If you're a fast typist, you can click the Submit and Publish button before 120 seconds elapses, and your blog will go online immediately.

If the banner ads bother you, you can upgrade the free account to the Pro version, which includes a lot of nice features, such as spell-checking, image posting, e-mail submission, and a lot more, for $35 a year. The free version of Blogger has only basic features, but other services with more options are also available. LiveJournal (www.livejournal.com), for example, lets readers post comments on your entries and lets you use a downloadable front end with better editing tools. Another, zBlogger (www.zblogger.com), offers a huge assortment of templates and has tools to change the look of your site dramatically.

If you have your own Web server or an account with a Web-hosting provider, you can host your own blog with a minimal system (at least 400 MHz), minimal bandwidth (unless you become a runaway blogging success), and cheap or free software. Most blogging packages require at least some of the following supporting software to work: Apache (www.apache.org) or Microsoft IIS, PHP (www.php.net) or Perl (www.perl.com), and MySQL (www.mysql.com). (Check the package's documentation for requirements.) A blog is essentially an interactive database hosted on a Web server and manipulated by the scripts in the blogging package. Luckily, this is all transparent to users; you don't use the software, but the blog does automatically. The advantages to running your own blog is that you get more space, far more customization, an editorial policy of your own devising, your own URL, and many more features than using a blog service. The trade-off is that you must maintain the blog yourself.

Assuming you have the basics in place, you'll need to select and install blogging software. Selecting a blog package is very personal, so your best bet is to check out some of the more popular packages and ask yourself some questions: Will it make your blog look and feel like your favorite blogs? Does it work the way you like to work (via e-mail submissions, text files, instant messaging, or direct input via a Web browser)? Does it support extra features, such as a download library, online photo storage, or a search engine? Does it have a WYSIWYG editor? Does it provide an RSS subscription hookup, which lets blog search engines easily index your entries and lets other bloggers subscribe to your blog?

Movable Type (www.movabletype.org) is probably the most popular blogging tool. This program works entirely via your Web browser and offers comments, link lists to other sites and blogs, searching, and indexing. It lacks a WYSIWYG editor, so you need to know a little HTML to spice up your entries. PHP-Nuke (www.phpnuke.org) is a full-fledged mini-portal system that many bloggers, including myself, use to offer users more features than typical blogs, such as discussion boards, download areas, reader-to-reader e-mail, and surveys. And there are modules to add other features, such as a WYSIWYG editor, e-mail newsletters, and thousands of ready-made visual templates. But PHP-Nuke requires a fair amount of tinkering to get your blog just right.

Radio UserLand (http://radio.userland.com) is a combination of a paid-hosting service and a front-end program for Windows, Mac, or Linux. The text and link editors are fast, full-featured, and exceptionally easy to use. The resulting blogs have the typical link lists, searchable archives, and reader comments—all for an annual $40 license. Another tool, b2 (www.cafelog.com) is also popular, because it lets HTML coders transform visual templates completely with minimal fuss. It also offers readers a virtual chat window within the blog and has an e-mail submission method. Of course, there are many different blogging packages out there. If you've come across a blog that you want to emulate, check the page for a reference to the blog software used.

The Mechanics of Blogging

Blogging, that is, the act of creating entries in your blog, is typically as simple as writing an e-mail on a Web-based mail service like Hotmail. First, you log on to your blog site using a Web browser and click on the Create Entry button or link. Next, fill in the Title fields and start typing the body of your post in the Entry section. Some blogging sites and tools have Microsoft Word–like toolbars, complete with buttons for hypertext links, bold type, bulleted lists, and so forth. Other tools may require you to know a little HTML for text formatting, but such tools usually provide a cheat-sheet of basic HTML. You may find it easier in such cases to write your entries in a WYSIWYG HTML editor and then copy and paste the HTML source into the blog.

Once you're done, clicking on the Submit button usually shows you a preview of what your entry will look like, complete with clickable links and typographical effects. This is a good time not only to reread what you've written, but to test any links you've provided. At the bottom of this page is the Post button, and clicking on it sets the digital machinery in motion.

The blog site then time- and date-stamps the entry, posts it to the top of your blog page, moves previous entries one notch down, and archives the oldest entries. The site may also generate a list of links along the side of the page and create a clickable calendar to get to older entries. Once the blog site is set up, this all happens automatically.