January 29, 2014
Below is a selection of the basic blogging terms that are definitely a must-know for any beginner blogger. The aim behind this list is to help teachers and students new to the blogosphere avoid those “awkward” lexical confrontations with technical terms . Learning and understanding this terminology will absolutely help you blog better.
Post :
Blog posts are the main content of your blog. They are the content you provide to your readers in a chronological order and is usually featured in the homepage of your blog. Blog posts are relatively short but not like the one you are reading right now:)
Header:
Headers appear at the top and usually stretch across the upper section of a blog. Headers can contain text and images and their importance lies in the fact that they distinguish your blog from others and give it a unique feel.
Footer :
Footer is the section that appears at the very bottom of a blog page and usually has different widgets within it.
Widget:
Widgets are sections in the layout of your blog where you can customize and add other elements. Most templates come out with a widget-ready section either in the sidebars, header, or footer where bloggers can add extra content.
Related : Why You Should Create A Blog for Your Class.
Sidebar :
Sidebars are narrow sections or columns of your blog. They are usually placed either on the right or left the blog page or on both sides.
Bogroll:
This is a list of other blogs and websites that a blogger displays in the sidebar oh his/her blog.
Vlog :
Vlog is also called video blog. This is a type of blog that is made up entirely of video posts. Any blog that shares only videos is called a Vlog.
Link :
This is the element that links a piece of content to another.
Permalink :
Permalink refers to the unique permanent link assigned to a blog post or page.
RSS:
Really simple syndication. This is a method for syndicating the content of your web page. RSS makes the content you share on your blog available for feeding, meaning that others interested in what you write can subscribe to it and start getting your updates each time you post something new.Think of it like this : one TV channel broadcasts a show and it is shown in many other channels .
Related: Teachers Visual Guide to Setting Up aA Classroom Blog.
Feed :
This is the syndicated content that your RSS system generated for your blog. It is the content that subscribers of your blog will get in their RSS readers or in their emails once you post new content.
Repost :
Reposting is to post again a comment, post or article that has already been featured in another thread.
Plugin :
This is an application or add-on that bloggers add to their blogs to enhance its performance or to give it new functionalities. For instance a social media plugin is an application that adds icons of popular social media websites to your blog and which your readers can use to either follow your blog or share its content on these platforms.
Template :
To simply put it, a blog template is its layout, its visual representation. For instance the template of this blog is made up of a header, a right sidebar, body, and footer. Other blogs might have different templates with two right sidebars, or a left and right sidebar…etc.
Themes :
Themes are what give skin and flesh to your blog. When you create your blog, the first thing you do is you choose a them for it. Themes are available for download , some are free and some are pro. Themes also allow you to customize the look and feel of your blog.
Tag:
This is a label or descriptor that you use to identify and organize the content of a blog post. For instance, the labels I would assign to this post are : blogging terms, technical terminology…etc
Category :
A category is different from a tag and most beginning bloggers confuse the two. Categories are broader than tags. They are the topics you cover in your posts. Within these topics are several other sub topics ( tags ). For instance, this post falls under the category of ” blogging for beginners”. Next time when I post something about how to blog I would also add it to this category. One good thing about categories is that that allow you to organize and access content based on topics you cover in your blog.
Thread :
This is a sequence of posts or articles on a particular topic. Open threads are those threads that are open for anyone to post in them . Posts that are off-topic in a given thread are called thread drifts.
Captcha :
This is a security system that webmasters use to minimize comment spam by requiring users to type in a security number or letters that appear fuzzily in an image.
Comment spam:
Comment spam refers to the snippet of text posted in the comment section of a blog and which is not related to the content of the post. The aim behind comment spam is to attract visitors to visit another website whose link is included in the text of the comment. These kinds of comments are posted either by real people trying to promote their websites and blogs or by spambots,
CSS:
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is the coding language that displays and gives shape to the HTML of your blog. CSS has to do with the style and look of your blog. You can use its attributes for example to change colour, font…etc.
Domaine name :
This is the basic address of your blog or website for example the domain name of this blog is : www.educatorstechnology.com
Subdomain:
This the secondary section in your blog that is nested within the main domain. For instance forums.educatorstechnology.com, or help.educatorstechnology.com, or www.educatorstechnology.wordpress.com.
HTML:
Hyper Text Markup Language is a coding language that is used to develop and create webpages. HTML is made up of several tags, attributes, and divs that together allow you to create anything you want online including, templates, charts, tables, widgets and many more. However, HTML is not the only coding system out there there are alos other coding languages that are more complicated such as Python and PHP.
URL :
This is the whole address of the page, the one that appears in the address bar.