Essential Blogging

Alexander Moskalyuk reviews below the new O'Reilly title Essential Blogging, which he points out is available not only for purchase through conventional purchase, but also with O'Reilly's Safari Online subscription, where it's available for a mere 1 point. Read on for his take on how useful Essential Blogging really is. Essential Blogging author Benjamin Trott, Mena G. Trott, Shelley Powers, J. Scott Johnson, Rael Dornfest, Cory Doctorow pages 264 publisher O'Reilly rating 3/10 reviewer Alexander Moskalyuk ISBN 0596003889 summary Introduction to running Weblogs on the Internet

Blog, Blog, Blog. Recent media infatuation with the blogging effect seems to be overwhelming. It seems that newspaper journalists have just discovered the ability to post and comment messages on the Internet, while most of the computer aficionados and heavy Internet users just shrug their shoulders when told about personal Web journals that link to other articles on the Web.

Blogging Essentials is mostly a generic guide to setting up and running your own Weblog using the software available out there. It doesn't require as much technical knowledge and Unix experience as Running Weblogs with Slash, and doesn't have a nice preface by CmdrTaco, but for a person who is determined to keep a daily journal available on the Internet, it would provide helpful reading material.

What's reviewed

Blogger, Radio Userland and MovableType are the primary products discussed in the book. Each of these packages has two chapters dedicated to it, one for beginners' introduction and one for description of advanced features. The main difference between these three products is in their hosting capabilities - Blogger wants you to keep the journal entries on its Web site and provides Web interface, Radio UserLand keeps the posts on its own server as well, while providing desktop interface, while MovableType assumes the user has a Web server on which to install the blogging software. Both Blogger and Radio UserLand allow for self-hosting, which is also covered in introductory chapters.

Another chapter is dedicated to server-based Blosxom, and in the review of desktop clients such blog utilities as BlogScript, BlogApp, BlogBuddy, W.Bloggar and Slug are covered.

What's good and what's bad

While the depth of covered material is surprisingly large for such a narrow topic, a lot of book pages are spent on displaying screenshots of the blogging software, and showing other people's blogs. The only thought that never left my mind while reading this book was "Who would buy it?" Why would you need 264 pages to explain you how to set up your own journal and run it? People who find satisfaction in running their own customized versions of online journals already know most of the material, and those who don't would probably opt in for easier Web-based interface like LiveJournal.

The book seems to be just a quick walk-through of the manuals, and if you consider that all of the reviewed products have pretty good help and FAQ sections, the need for such book decreases even more. I can hardly name anyone to whom I would recommend this book.

Table of contents can be viewed on publisher's Web site.

You can purchase Essential Blogging from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Oxymoronic title?

[Ratface]

Isn't "Essential Blogging" an oxymoron? ;-)

Essential FOR blogging

[reaper20]

Mozilla users, check out Mozblog. It's a nifty XUL app that integrates into Mozilla. You can drag and drop links, post, and publish all from the little window without even having to visit blogger.com.

The Value of Blogging

[hillct]

One of the first paragraphs of this review is perhaps the most telling:

Recent media infatuation with the blogging effect seems to be overwhelming. It seems that newspaper journalists have just discovered the ability to post and comment messages on the Internet, while most of the computer aficionados and heavy Internet users just shrug their shoulders when told about personal Web journals that link to other articles on the Web.

When considering the value of Blogging, you must see it for what it is. It's the natural extension of the 'Links Page' that every personal website has and were so prevelent even in the early days of the web in 1994 and 1995, that pages of personal bookmarks, outnumbered pages of actual meaningful content. That having been said, there are two distinct types of blogs. Those which simply act to point out a linked source of content the author finds to be of interest, and those which offer some sort of online punditry. Both types are of value in their own right, but blog readers will most likely favor one or the other type. Personally, I maintain a blogger based page for the simple purpose of having a portable bookmarking mechanism for my owwn convenience, since the demize of most of those .com ventures that sought to ptovide such a service supported by advertising.

With repect to this book, I would have to agree with the reviewer. Who would buy it? If you are familier with blogging, then you know what you need to know. If you are not, then you're more likely to buy a book entitled 'Websites for Beginners' or something. This book seems to be searching for a market where there most likely is none.

--CTH

Response from the editor of Essential Blogging

[gnat]

Hi, I'm Nathan Torkington, the editor of Essential Blogging. 3/10. Wow, that stings :-) I'm not sure it's entirely justified, though.

The numeric rating really seems disproportionate, as the reviewer did have some good things to say:

• "for a person who is determined to keep a daily journal available on the Internet, it would provide helpful reading material"
• "the depth of covered material is surprisingly large for such a narrow topic"

The reviewer appears to think that people are either hackers, or will use LiveJournal (a system we didn't cover in depth in book). I take issue with that.

The primary audience for Essential Blogging is someone who is new to blogging. If you already use a blogging system like Movable Type, you'll learn something from the book (Ben and Mena, the authors of Movable Type, wrote a lot of new material for their chapters), but you are not the primary audience. We even say this in the preface, and the back cover pretty clearly states what's inside: "Essential Blogging helps you select the right blogging software for your needs and shows you how to get your blog up and running."

Someone new to blogging can read Chapter 1 to learn about the different aspects of a blogging system; the pros and cons of self-hosting vs hosted, desktop vs server; and ultimately decide which web journal system to use. Then they can read the chapters specific to their chosen system to get started, and return when they're ready to customize the appearance of their blog.

While working on the book, I kept my Dad in mind. He's technical, not stupid, and if he wanted to start a blog, what I want him to know about? The audience also explains the screenshots--if you're new to blogging, you don't to know what to expect nor what the possibilities are. Although it's hard for the reviewer to imagine there are people who haven't been hacking web sites and writing their own blogging systems since 1996, such people do exist.

But even people who already blog and are entrenched in a particular blogging system should check out the others. I'm a Movable Type user myself, but it was a real eye-opener to use Radio Userland for a while. The whole approach to software and blogging is different in Radio Userland, and it makes you look at your own setup in a new light. I'm not saying you need to buy Essential Blogging to do this, but such comparisons are a benefit of having multiple systems presented side-by-side in the one book.

About the only thing I agree with the reviewer wholeheartedly on is that it's a shame we don't cover LiveJournal more. When the book was being developed, I didn't see the geek interest in LiveJournal that I see now. Perhaps in the second edition we'll have chapters on LiveJournal.

So to conclude, I sure hope the old saying that there's no such thing as bad publicity is true. I hope the next book gets a real review (more than six paragraphs) by someone who reads the preface :-).

--Nat
(blogs on O'Reilly Network and use.perl, as well as several Movable Type installations for family, and a Blossom blog for work)