Blogging

What is a blog A **blog** (a wiki/Contraction_(grammar)|contraction of the term "**web log**")[1] is a type of wiki/Website|website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning //to maintain or add content to a blog//. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal wiki/Online_diary|online diaries] A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, wiki/Web_page|Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs

=Wordpress.com The Features You’ll Love (Wordpress is the preferred blogging site for educational use at OLMC)= Here’s some pretty cool stuff that just might make you want to use WordPress.com. When you’re ready, we’d love to have you [|sign up for a free blog]!

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The Features You’ll Love
Here’s some pretty cool stuff that just might make you want to use WordPress.com. When you’re ready, we’d love to have you [|sign up for a free blog]!

Takes seconds, costs nada
You can get a blog started in less time than it takes you to read this sentence. All you need is an email address. You’ll get your own WordPress.com address (like you.wordpress.com, you can switch to a custom address later if you’d like), a selection of great free and customizable designs for your blog (we call them themes), //3 gigabytes// of file storage (that’s about 2,500 pictures!) and all the other great features listed here. You can blog as much as you want for free, your blog can be public to the world or private for just your friends, and our [|premium features] are completely optional.

Dozens of gorgeous themes
You can change the look of your blog with over 75 attractive themes ranging from professional to fun to crazy, and you can switch themes instantly with just a click of a button. Each theme allows you to customize your sidebar using widgets, and several themes let you upload your own photo or image for the header bar. We add themes regularly based on user requests. If you’re a CSS pro, you can also [|customize your CSS code].

Integrated stats system
One of our most popular features is our stats system. It’s designed to give you up-to-the-minute stats on how many people are visiting your blog, where they’re coming from, which posts are most popular, and which search engine terms are sending people to your blog. It’s also [|available as a plug-in] for self-hosted WordPress.

A great tool for writing
It’s easy to create great posts with WordPress.com. Uploading photos is easy, as is using services like Flickr or Photobucket. You can embed videos from YouTube or Hulu. And we know how frustrating it is to lose hours of work, so when you’re writing we continuously save your post, just in case.

Let’s get those 15 minutes
When you write a post and add relevant tags, we automatically add them to our global [|tag system] and tag surfer, driving new traffic as other people interested in the same topics as you will find your post and leave comments on your blog. You’ll be at the top of our Blogs of the Day in no time.

We kill spam dead
WordPress.com uses [|Akismet], the world’s best comment and trackback spam technology. It blocks spammers from leaving comments on your blog. We also shut down spam blogs that try to sneak onto WordPress.com (so your blog won’t be in the same community as some Viagra-touting site).

Great help if you need it
If you have questions about using or extending your blog, we’ve got some of the most responsive support around. We’ve got friendly fellow users in the forums and on our support team who will help you out. There is great [|documentation], a [|support contact form], and the [|forums] are active 24 hours a day.

Like a rock
We run hundreds of servers in three datacenters (Chicago, Dallas, San Antonio) with instant copies of all your data and uploads in each. This allows us to serve your blog very quickly, and also if something catastrophic were to happen, like Chicago falling into Lake Michigan or Dallas being hit by a meteor, your blog would be okay.

You’re in good company
You’d be surprised who’s blogging on WordPress.com. We host CNN’s [|Political Ticker]; Dow Jones’ [|AllThingsD]; [|NFL]; Time Inc’s [|The Page]; People Magazine’s [|Style Watch]; famous bloggers like [|Mark Cuban], [|John Scalzi], and [|Joy Behar]; corporate blogs for [|Flickr] and [|KROQ]; and [|many more].

Pick up where you left off
If you already have a blog and would like to move it over to WordPress.com, you can import your content from Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, TypePad, or an existing WordPress blog.

Over 50 languages
So far, we’ve been able to offer native versions of WordPress.com in over 50 languages. Not just our home page—we’re doing Blogs of the Day, forums, and even tags in whatever language you prefer. If you’re a polyglot, you can help with the community translation process.

A great blogging community
WordPress.com is a community and conversations continue from one blog post to another and through the comments. Our tag surfer feature makes it easy for you to find like minded bloggers interested in the same topics as you and connect with them.

Multiple blogs and multiple authors
You can have as many blogs as you want! You’re only limited by your imagination. You can have group blogs with multiple authors who are allowed to post or contribute. This is great for topic blogs for things like books or politics, or just a blog for you and your friends in one place.

Privacy options, including members-only blogs
WordPress.com allows you to have a completely public blog, a blog which is public but not included in search engines or our public listings, or a private blog which only members can access. If you want a public blog, but only occasionally post something private, we have a per-post password option too!

Track replies to your comments
When you’re signed in and leave a comment on WordPress.com, we have a special page which notifies you of any followups to your comment so you can easily follow your conversations no matter what blog they’re on.

Not just a blog
WordPress.com has a feature called “pages” which allows you to easily create web pages. For example, you could add an “about me” page with your biography, and a link to that page would be automatically added to your sidebar. You can even create an entire web site using pages on WordPress.com, with a custom home page and your blog as one of the sub-pages.

No lock-in
You can leave WordPress.com any time you want and your content isn’t locked in. We provide a complete XML export of all your posts and comments.

Advertising
To support the service we may occasionally show Google text ads on your blog, however we do this very rarely. You can [|remove ads] from your blog for a low yearly fee. In the future you’ll be able to show your own ads and make money from your blog.

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