Essential Blogging: Selecting and Using Weblog Tools [Paperback]

Things in the world of blogging move fast. Minor celebrities rise and fall, new software is continually being released, new jargon is invented. It's hard for a paper book to keep up. There are some aspects of blogging which are gaining some permanancy. Unfortunately, this book only skims those topics, preferring to spend nearly 200 pages describing how to use particular (late 2002) versions of a few blogging tools.

The most incisive and thought-provoking part of the book is the last ten pages - interesting quotes from a range of bloggers. It's the only bit which shows any of the excitement and "buzz" of blogging and gets you wanting to get involved.

This is not a bad book. But it's not really the book described in its own advertsing. If you want a rough guide to comparing, installing and using a small selection of the well-known blog software offerings, this book is right for you. If you want a more thoughtful and detailed overview of what blogging is all about, why you should do it, what the terminology means, or how it works "under the hood", keep looking.

- an introduction to the tools of blogging
- a users manual to some of the more prolific blogging tools
- advice for those who might value the opinions of more well-known bloggers

Having been a dabbler in blogging for the past year, I find the introduction to blogging of little use. For me, the most useful contents are the chapters on Userland Radio, my blog tool of choice. The advanced chapter (ch. 6) is of specific value, as it details the mechanics of how the tool works 'under the hood', and how it can be customized. Although I only skimmed the chapters on Blogger and Moveable Type, those sections seem just as informative about their perspective tools, and should prove equally valuable to their users as the Userland chapters are to me.

The discussion of desktop blogging tools (ch. 2) is of equal value. It shows how one might use a more feature-rich editor in conjunction with the robust, content-management back-end of Userland. There is also a brief but informative discussion of the API's that make integration between blogging tools practical.

Of questionable value is the final chapter (ch. 10), which contains quotes from various bloggers opining the virtues of blogging and their own, personal experiences. Some of these comments are insightful. Some are clearly the pontifications of those who are legends in their own minds. Deciding which are which is left as an exercise to the reader.