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DEFINITIONS
The
terminology, like the field, is developing quickly
and in a number of directions. As
Sarah Boland writes: “it’s difficult
to describe digital / new media writing as it’s
in a constant state of flux”
GLOSSARY
OF TERMS FOR BLOGGING
This
is a selection of definitions of technical terms
used in blogs, blogs servers instructions or
terms referred in the usual practice. Though
most of the terms are taken from the glossary
of WordPress, other have been added by myself
and some content changed to be adapted for the
purposes of this list.
Blog
A blog, or weblog,
is an online journal, diary, or serial published
by a person or group of people.
Blogs are typically used by individuals
or peer groups, but are occasionally used by companies
or organizations as well. In the corporate arena,
the only adopters of the blog format so far have
tended to be design firms, web media companies,
and other "bleeding edge" tech firms.
Blogs often contain public as
well as private content. Depending on the functionality
of the CMS
software that is used, some authors may restrict
access — through the use of accounts or passwords
— to content that is too personal to be published
publicly.
“Blog”
is a verb as well as a noun. I could say,
“I’m blogging this,” meaning that I am writing
about it for my blog, but fortunately I wrote
my talk out in advance so I do not need to
blog it now.
Blogging
Blogging is the act of writing in one's
blog. To blog something is to write about
something in one's blog. This usually involves
linking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink)
to something the author finds interesting on the
internet.
See also: blogosphere,
blogroll
Blogosphere
The blogosphere is the subset of internet
web sites which are, or relate to, blogs.
See also: blog,
blogroll
Blogroll
A blogroll is a list of links to various
blogs or news sites. Often a blogroll is "rolled"
by a service which tracks updates (using feeds)
to each site in the list, and provides the list
in a form which aggregates update information.
See also: blog,
blogosphere,
feed, news
reader
External links: News
aggregator at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_aggregator)
CSS
CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets,
is a W3C (http://www.w3.org/)
open
standards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard)
programming language for specifying how a web
page is presented. It allows web site designers
to create formatting and layout for a web site
independently of its content.
Excerpt
An excerpt is a condensed
description of your blog post
and refers to the summary entered in the Excerpt
field of the editing panel. The excerpt
is used to describe your post in RSS feeds and
is typically used in displaying search results.
The excerpt is sometimes used in displaying
the Archives and Category views of your
posts.
An excerpt should not be
confused with the teaser which refers to
the first few sentences or paragraphs of a post.
When typing a long post you can insert the <!--more-->
Quicktag after a few sentences to act as a cut-off
point. When the post is displayed, the teaser,
followed by a hyperlink (such as Read the rest
of this entry...), are displayed. Your visitor
can then click on that link to see the full version
of your post.
Feed
A feed is a function of special software
that allows "Feedreaders" to access a site automatically
looking for new content and then posting the information
about new content and updates to another site.
This provides a way for users to keep up with
the latest and hottest information posted on different
blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS (alternately
defined as "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple
Syndication"), Atom or RDF files. Dave Shea, author
of the web design weblog Mezzoblue (http://mezzoblue.com)
has written a
comprehensive summary (http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/05/19/what_is_rssx/)
of feeds.
Moblogging
Moblogging is the act of posting to one's
blog via a mobile
device, e.g. mobile phone, smartphone, or Blackberry.
It is pronounced as mob?-logging or mob-logging,
or sometimes as mob-logging in reference
to smart mobs.
mod_rewrite
mod_rewrite is an extension module of
the Apache web
server software which allows for "rewriting"
of URLs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Url)
on-the-fly. Rewrite rules use regular
expressions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression)
to parse the requested URL from the client, and
translate it into a different URL before interpretation.
MUDs
MUDs
(standing for "Multiple-user Domain")
are both synchtonous and hypertext forms of communication.
The synchronous component allows users to interact
in "real-time". soomewhat like holding
a conversation in a room. Synchronous communication
such Internet Relay Chat differ from asynchronous
forms such usenet newsgroups, mailing list, electronic
bulletin boards, in which messages have a kind
of permanence, somewhat like posters pasted on
walls.
News
reader
A
news aggregator or news reader is
a computer program which tracks syndicated information
feeds, via RSS,
RDF, or Atom.
Most news aggregators allow one to 'subscribe'
to a feed, and automatically keep track of the
articles one has read, similar to an email client
tracking read emails.
Many
blogs make their
content available in feed
form for the convenience of readers using news
aggregators. WordPress can generate feeds in RSS
and/or Atom formats.
External
links: News
aggregator at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_aggregator)
Page
A Page is often used to
present "static" information about yourself or
your site. A good example of a Page is information
you would place on an About Page. A Page should
not be confused with the time-oriented objects
called posts. Pages
are typically "timeless" in nature and live "outside"
your blog.
The word "page" has long been
used to describe any HTML document on the web.
In WordPress, however, "Page" refers to a very
specific feature first introduced in WordPress
version 1.5.
Perl
Perl is an acronym for Practical Extraction
and Report Language, but it's most commonly
spelled as a proper name. It's a very popular
and powerful scripting language used for web applications,
although its use is being largely replaced by
PHP in the mainstream.
One of its strengths lies in its speedy and effective
use of regular
expressions
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression).
Its unofficial motto is, "There's More Than One
Way To Do It," or "TMTOWTDI," owing to the extreme
flexibility of the syntax.
WordPress does not use Perl, and it is therefore
not required.
Permalink
A permalink is a URL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Url)
at which a resource or article will be permanently
stored. Many pages driven by Content
Management Systems contain excerpts of content
which is frequently rotated, making linking to
bits of information within them a game of chance.
Permalinks allow users to bookmark full articles
at a URL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Url)
they know will never change, and will always present
the same content.
Permalinks are optional in WordPress, but are
highly recommended as they greatly increase the
cleanliness of URL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Url).
WordPress uses the Apache
module mod_rewrite
to implement its permalink system.
PHP
PHP is a recursive acronym
for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. It is
a popular server-side scripting language designed
specifically for integration with HTML,
and is used (often in conjunction with MySQL)
in Content
Management Systems and other web applications.
It is available on many platforms, including Windows,
Unix/Linux
and Mac OS X,
and is open
source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source)
software.
WordPress is written using PHP
and requires it for operation.
Post
An individual entry of content
into a blog, or the act of uploading a new piece
of content to the live blog site. Posts can be
edited after they are published, if necessary
or desired.
See also: page
Post Slug
A word or two describing an entry, for use in
permalinks (replaces the %posttitle% field therein),
especially useful if titles tend to be long or
they change frequently.
RDF
Resource Description Framework. A language used
to describe the locations of resources on the
web. WordPress can produce output in RDF format
that describes the locations of posts. Like RSS,
RDF is used for content syndication.
RSS
RDF Site Summary.
A format for syndicating content on news-like
sites viewable by RSS-aware programs called news
aggregators.
Tagline
A tagline is a catchy phrase that describes the
character or the attributes of the blog in a brief,
concise manner. Think of it as the slogan, or
catchline for a weblog.
XML
icon
The XML icon is a graphical representation of
the syndicate this site link. It points to the
actual RDF or XML file that can be used for syndication.
This is found on most sites that run syndicated
weblogs.
Wiki
wikis
are server programs that allow multiple
users to contribute to a Web site
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