Here to you a little dictionary of the main keywords and expressions you will frequently meet along your experience as a blogger.
The word "blog" is derived from the composition of the words "web" and "log" (web journal or online journal).
The blogs or weblogs are a new way to publish and share your ideas over the internet. The blogs are more than just a personal web page. They represent an efficient media tool which allows you to communicate and exchange your points of view on either a public or a private basis.
You can find different names for the term "blog": weblog, online journal but also photoblog and videoblog if the main contents are based on photos or videos. The term moblog is used if blogs are updated over a telecommunication device.
Blogs can be seen as a mixture between a personal web page, a news channel and a forum. They thus represent strong media tools marked by their animation simplicity, communication aspects and their quality of references. Each information leads to an open discussion between the animator (or animators) of the blog and its readership. It is an unlimited discussion which contributes to the development of the blog audience. Finally, syndication and the XML standards allow the readers to subscribe to the updates of a blog in a non-intrusive way and all this in real time. All in all, the blog is a remarkable media tool.
The barriers to internet technology disappear. In this context, blogs are more than just a new publication tool. They are real media...within reach for everyone.
With already more than ten million blogs worldwide, the blogs experienced a growth without precedent. They are used by individuals, communities, journalists, entrepreneurs, employees, politicans, associations, companies...
The creation and animation of a blog is very simple and requires no technical skills. It is now your turn to speak up and create your blog !
A "blogger" is the term for an internet user publishing a blog.
The blogosphere is the collective term encompassing all blogs on the internet.
A blogroll is a list of external links which are generally displayed on the blog sidebars and which represent all blogs that the blogger regards as worth visiting ("friends' blogs").
Strategy used to increase the placing (and then, the visibility) of a blog/site on Google search engine.
Moblog is the contraction of the word "mobile blog". It is a term used to describe a blog that is updated using a mobile phone or digital assistant.
A permalink is the contraction of the word "permanent link". It is a type of URL designed to refer to each post that is published on a blog. The permalink allows other blogs to take up posts from a blog and it allows to reference them in search engines.
A photoblog is a blog with photos as its main contents. A Photoblog has the same characteristics of a blog.
Examples of search engines/directories are: weblogs.com (international), or weblogues.com (France)
It's an article published on a blog. A post might be a text, a photo, a multimedia file. Posts are usually short and full of links towards other blogs, sites, articles.
RSS is the abbreviation for "RDF Site Summary" (or "Really Simple Syndication").
RSS is a standardized content description method that dissociates the content from its format and its medium. RSS makes it possible to export site contents to other sites or media (RSS feeds). This is called syndication.
Syndication allows an internet user to export site contents to another web page or another medium. The target sites/media are called content aggregators.
Generally, the author allows partial syndication of his/her posts (for example the title and the 100 first words). A link called "Read more..." invites the reader to continue reading the full post on the weblog.
Keyword or category allowing the definition or the categorization of contents.
A trackback is an automatic process which allows a blogger to be informed of the posts of other bloggers that reference to his/her post.
A vidoeblog or vlog is a blog with videos as its main contents.