How to Do Everything with Your Web 2.0 Blog (Paperback)
Product Description
Incorporate the hottest new Web technologies into your blog! How to Do Everything with Your Web 2.0 Blog makes it easy to choose the blogging tools that are best for you and master the basics of blog design and template manipulation. You’ll learn how to add different Web 2.0 services to your blog, including images, video, audio, forums, tags, wikis, and even money-making features. It’s time to take your blog to the next level and get more hits, more fans, more friends, and more customers.
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Learn about different blogging tools, including Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, and ExpressionEngine
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Customize your blog’s design by editing templates and style sheets
- Share your blog headlines and story feeds via RSS and Atom
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Add photos, video, and audio–including podcasts–to your blog
- Drive traffic to your site with tagging, social bookmarking, and ranking services
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Collaborate with users through wikis
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Promote visitor participation using forums, community blogs, and newsletters
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Make money through your blog with Google AdSense, Amazon, and other affiliate programs
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Track, optimize, maintain, and back up your blog
About the Author
Todd Stauffer is the author or coauthor of more than three dozen books on computing and the Internet. He is the originator of the How to Do Everything series and author of all four editions of the bestseller How to Do Everything with Your iMac.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Blogging Book of the Five I’ve Read
I’ve read five how-to books on blogging. How to Do Everything with Your Web 2.0 Blog is the best by far.
(The four others are listed below.
Do yourself a favor: don’t judge this book by its (awful) cover. I’ve had this book by my side every step of the way while setting up my very first blog, and I have to say it has been a huge help. Stauffer’s style is direct and engaging, not cutesy. He tells you what you need to know to get started, without a lot of fluff.
I wanted to write a review here because I think this books deserves a big audience, and because the Amazon listing tells you little about what’s covered. So here’s what’s inside:
“Web 2.0 Blog” covers four different blogging platforms: Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, and Expression Engine. So if you’re interested in one of these four, you’ll find the book very helpful. If you are trying to decide which of the four to go with, the book is even more helpful, as you can compare them feature by feature. For instance, you’ll see that while Expression Engine seems quite powerful and flexible, it’s obviously more complicated than the other three. Stauffer does a good job of helping you weigh the pros and cons of each.
The book covers quite a lot in a 450 pages, and it does it very well. There’s even a basic introduction to XHTML and CSS, giving you a peak at how each blogging platform works under the hood. Other topics covered in depth are:
– RSS feeds
– Photoblogs, podcasting, audioblogging, and adding video
– Working with social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Technorati
– using wikis to collaborate with readers
– adding a forum to open the discussion beyond comments
– community and group blogs
– sending e-newsletters to your subscribers
– getting traffic and monetizing your blog
Highly recommended.
I thought this was a wonderful book about blogging. It is not a thin and light book. But, instead, is packed with lots of information and well worth its cover price. It is well written and well organized. And to see specifically what is covered I recommend you examine the Search Inside material provided by Amazon for this book. There you can find a basic Table of Contents and a very detailed one, too.
There were four topics I especially liked the coverage of in this book: (1) blogging tools, (2) blog styles, (3) blog theory, & (4) how to start a blog.
The blogging tools covered were Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, and Expression Engine. I have created blogs at both Blogger and WordPress. And I think the discussion of both in this book was very fair and representative. I have heard Typepad is a really great service, and it is very reasonably priced. But I have opted to do my blogging on the freebie side so far. I have no experience with Expression Engine. But this book has me thinking of doing some investigation into that service.
The blogging styles mentioned were:
>> Personal diary
>> Views & reviews
>> From the desk of…
>> Organizational outreach
>> Internal organizational
>> Community
I was surprised the style I use for my current blogs was not mentioned: Question & answer. But there really are an unlimited number of blogging styles. That’s the beauty of blogs – you can make them what you want them to be and to do.
Throughout the book the author covers blog theory. And he gives us his take on how to actually start a blog. He includes notes, tips and sidebars to help the reader better grasp the material in the book. If you follow the pointers in this book you will probably create a real winner of a blog. You might even include images, video, audio, forums, tags, wikis, and some moneymaking features. But you don’t have to. Hopefully you’ll get more hits, more fans, more friends, and even more customers. 5 stars!