Within the Blogosphere

Published in Sci-Tech World
10th May 2003

EVERY now and then internet provides a new avenue, for web surfers, enforcing its diversity further. The latest addition to its list of availables is blogging. A blog can be conceptualized as an individual’s space on the web which serves as an effective outlet for emotions, opinions and thoughts. It is an online log representing events and routines. To be more precise, it mirrors one’s activities in an offline journal. Here are a few guidelines which tells you how to create and maintain your own blog.

Blogging has created an online community of bloggers in its own right as more and more people are realizing its potential as a platform from which individuals from different nationalities can share and voice their opinions on current affairs, world conflicts and regional issues.

Why make a blog?

Blogging has broken down all barriers to online communication and has opened up various avenues for tolerance and awareness of different countries and the different cultures and religions associated with each. And that’s just one of the multitude of reasons for blogging.

How to start?

Whether you are a novice or an expert net user, if you want to know everything about blogs, Blogger.com is the place to start. After a free signup on this website, all you need to do is to select a template from the vast array displayed and start posting. You can select the format of the header and footer for each entry.

The HTML gurus amongst you can easily fiddle with the template’s HTML to suit your whims. You can even create your own HTML templates with FrontPage, etc. and then insert the HTML in the template box.

Now that you have created your own blog and posted a few entries, what next? Blogger gives you the option of keeping your blog public or private. If you want your blog to be open to visitors and serve as a regular webpage, you can, apart from setting your blog’s setting to “Public,” can get your blog listed in a variety of web rings specifically for bloggers.

How it works?

All of the above websites work in a similar fashion. You enter your blog’s details and the website will give you the web ring’s logo’s HTML code to insert anywhere in your blog. After a review of your blog by the ring administrator to check that you have added the code, your blog will be listed in the ring.

To keep a track on who’s visiting your blog, you can create an account with . Not only it keeps count of your visitors, but also track their domain, the time span for which they stayed on your blog and the search words/URLs from which they were referred to your blog.

Visitor tracking apart, there are a diversity of different tidbits around the internet which you can insert in your blog to make it more sophisticated. Tag boards (Shout boxes, as they are sometimes called) are one of them which enable your visitors to post a message on your blog if they do not want to get into the hassle of signing guest books.

You can get them for free from or . To enable your visitors to post their comments on each of your entries you can sign up with or . This will give you the HTML code to insert in your template with the complete guidelines on how and where to insert. With the yaccs website you can get various templates for your pop-up comment boxes or customize your own.

Another tidbit is a virtual mood. Yes, you can show your visitors how you are feeling at the moment by creating an account with and selecting a mood plus an emoticon to go with it. Again you will have to copy/paste the code in your template so that it shows up on your blog.

Bravenet at has another unique set of webmaster resources. You can choose from a Guest book, Guest Map, Link Exchange (which will allow your visitors to add a link to their own website/blog) and a form which will allow your visitors to refer their friends to your blog.

Blog Linker at performs almost the same function as the Link Exchange on Bravenet does, but the only difference is that Blog Linker will display all the links with the blog description on your blog.

Bloglet at also provides the code to insert a subscribe box on your blog. Your blog visitors can subscribe to your blog and receive an email notification whenever you update it.

Blog Skins at has a vast set of templates with varying colour schemes and designs. You can download them, and insert their HTML code in your template box at Blogger.

Another blog website allows your visitors to rate your blog from your blog only.

Some interesting links

Some notable ones are:

Pak Ranks: www.pakranks.com/

Blog Snob: www.blogsnob.idya.net

Muslim Blogs Webring: www.ringsurf.com/netring?ring=muslimblogs;action=home

Blogging Muslimz Webring: www.blogginmuslimz.tk

Blog Plates Webring: www.ringsurf.com/netring?ring=blogplates;action=home

I Love to Blog Webring: www.ringsurf.com/netring?ring=ilovetoblog;action=home

Blogmania Webring: www.blogmania.com/join.html

The aforementioned are just some of the popular webrings. In practice, you can go to and then perform a search by the keyword “blog” and get more 10,000 and webrings.