Blogging Software: Get the Basics

Every blogging software package has a number of option you can choose from.  Some are designed to make your blog look the best with bells and whistles.  Others are must-haves.

/READ MORE// What is a blogroll, and how does it work?

Clearly, the thing to look for most in a blogging software package is easy access to publishing or posting.  If you install your new software and can't find how to easily publish an article, your new package might not be worth much as blogging material.

Good blogging software packages must have:

An Easy, Usable, Accessible Interface.

Check out what the dashboard or control panel looks like before you buy.  A good User Interface (or UI) is important to your workflow and sanity.  If you can make heads or tails of what you see, chances are good you won't enjoy what you want to do.

Anti-Spam

Spam comments have become an everyday part of blogging, but that doesn't mean you can't fight them.  Much like e-mail spam, spam in the comments section tends to be automated, posting unless information with links to other kinds of sites away from your blog.  Look for a blogging package that has functionality in place to help you block, ban and/or moderate in some fashion.

Comments:

A blog isn't a blog without interactive commenting.  You don't have to use the comments as a writer - but you should!.  Taking the comments section away takes away a vital element of what makes a blog great - letting your readers have cultivating discussions about whatever topics you write about.

RSS feed.

If your blog doesn't have an RSS feed, move on.  If you have any interest whatsoever in growing your blog and building traffic, an RSS feed is one of the single best ways to get to that goal.  An RSS feed is a computer-readable version of your blog, standardized so it can be displayed in newsfeeds, websites and other blogs.  You can learn a lot more about RSS feeds here and it's something to be discussed at this blog in another article.

Pinging.

Blog software that uses pinging services is a great idea.  Pinging is an automatic note to search engines and newsreaders, letting those places know that your blog has been updated and the article is at this location.  A Ping is a way for your blog to tell other services 'Hey!  Over Here!'.  And of course, if Search Engines know you have new content to be read, more people can help find it.

There a couple other features I would personally recommend to any new blogger, but many bloggers don't use them on their blogs.  I highly recommend:

Categories:

Blogs often tend to jump around from category to category, topic to topic.  Categorizing your posts with standard topics gives your readers an easy way to browse and sort your content based on what they want to read.  A favourite blog of mind MoCo Loco - a Modern and Contemporary Design blog - uses categories to sort through posts.  Our sister site this.is.IONS serves up content from design to science and technology.  They use categories such as: Apple, Android, Microsoft etc to help users fid more content.

Tags:

A tag is any term associated with your post.  If you write a new post about your new cat, you might tag the post 'Kitten'.  Tagging is a newer addition to the world of blogging, but has so far worked really well at sorting through data quickly.  This article, for example, uses tags that might be relevant content for readers, such as Spam, or Getting Started.

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