Anyone out there a "Blogger"?
 

I've recently started setting up a Weblog for my racing journal. My ISP provides B2 blogging software... Are there any must have features?

nostatic is a definate blogger.

The main "must-have" feature is trackback, which allows people to reference your posts, and your server knows when they do. The other is RSS feeds, which allow people to syndicate your information.

My "personal" blogs are at nostatic.com/blog and simpleflower.com/blog. Work is weblogs.usc.edu, and I participate in some other ones, as well as some wikis that impersonate blogs (socialtext workspaces...those are password protected though, but we're working on public spaces).

Here's mine so far. http://moto-delta.com/v-web/b2/index.php

I've put soo much narrative content from racing on pelican, I thought I'd start consolidating it into one place... Car development, race stories, and funny racing stuff.

I have trackback and Pingback, but I still have no idea what they do. Can you elaborate?

Best way to understand is with an example.

Imagine 2 weblogs, John's Blog and Mary's Blog.

1. John writes an article about all the benefits of dogs versus cats as house pets.

2. Mary is writing an article about all the horrible diseases cats carry. In her article, she mentions John's article promoting dogs, and she links to it.

3. When Mary publishes her article to her blog, her blogging software sends a "ping" to John's server, to let it know that she has made reference to John's article.

4. John's Trackback count, which is usually displayed below an entry, changes from "0" to "1". For example:

Posted by John at 3:43pm | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (1) | Permalink

5. When John's visitors click on his Trackback count, they will see a link back to Mary's article, along with a brief excerpt of it. So if John's readers are curious to see what Mary wrote about dogs, they can follow that link to her article on her blog.

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So, Trackback is a kind of weblog cross-referencing tool. It's purposes can be:

- To say to your readers "Hey look! Other people are writing about what I wrote!"

- To say to some other blogger "Hey look, I wrote something about what you wrote!"

- Some people think of Trackback as a way of leaving a comment on someone's blog entry, but leaving it on YOUR site rather than theirs. Likewise, many people consider receiving a Trackback the same as receiving a comment, and they choose to list comments and trackbacks together instead of separately.

Pingback is a variation on the theme.

So how does Mary's software know where to find John's blog? Is it only if she adds a specific link to John's?

Thanks for the help....

If you look at a typical blog, there will be a trackback link at the bottom of each post. If you click on it, it should pop up a window that lists a trackback URL, along with any trackback links. You copy that URL and in your authoring window (for your blog) there should be a text box for "trackback". Paste the URL there, then when you publish your post, your server pings that URL.

Geez,

I am finally 100% right about something.

Well actually he's sort of indefinate at times... ;)