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.

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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.

Gratuitous Plug

[parliboy]

Personally, I'll just wind up using Coranto [gweilo.org] when the time comes. I've used so it (and its predecessor NewsPro) for so many different sites over the years, that it just seems the natural course of things. It's flat-text, but since it's just my diary, who cares?

O-Reilly Safari

[stienman]

I hadn't heard of the safari before. Looks like you subscribe to a number of points per month, then you can swap out books up to your point level once every month. If you get the $10/mo you get 5 points, which is five 1 point books per month. To purchase those books you'd pay about $150, so this subscription sounds good for those who only need a particular reference for a few months at a time, as well for those books that have little or no future reference value. It also allows for the fact that too many technologies change, evolve and disappear within 15 months.

Still, I like collecting books. I wonder if they'd give a discount on the sale of previously subscribed titles. Reading a book on the computer isn't as nice as holding it in one's hands, either, but overall it's as good a deal as leasing a car - obviously not for everyone - good for many.

-Adam

Who would buy it?

[daoist]

> "Who would buy it?" Why would you need 264 pages to explain you how to set up your own journal and run it?

An organization that is looking at the different Blog options. They will use it for self-promotion/feel good stuff, and show how every day they do something that brings them closer to their goals, or looks good in the public eye.

xan

jonathon

Re:O-Reilly Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

That's correct. For $10 per month you get monthly access to roughly 5 titles (very few books are priced at 2 points, there are also a few books in half-point range).

Safari sets the swap date, which is the date when you can check all your old books in, and choose the new ones. The swap date is 45 days from your original subscription day and then it's every 30 days. On those days you get 5 points to spend - you can either keep the current books, keep some of them, and choose some new ones, or choose 5 new titles for next month.

The pricing and library are attractive to those who have time on their hands and want to learn new technologies. If you're unemployed, or a student on vacation, or just have some free time, for $10 and a month's worth of time you can get five books on any skill you'd like to learn, Networking, Perl, MCSE, etc.

For reference value and for people who are generally busy and have no time to spend hours reading it's probably cheaper to buy the paper version of the book.

Read it at Safari for a month

[acroyear]

One option, since its one of those books you only need for a little while to select and set up your software, would be to "rent" the book online for a month from Safari [oreilly.com] at O'Reilly's website, then either unsubscribe from Safari or switch to a more interesting book later.