For the first of my Blog Tools Reviews, I figure its only fair that I talk about blogs in general to make sure we are all on a level playing field.

So first off, what’s a blog?

The very first thing that one should know is: what is a blog?

A blog (a contraction of the term “web log“) is a type of 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.
- Wikipedia

If that didn’t make any sense, then you can look at it this way: a blog is kind of like a public diary, except that it can be about anything: news, politics, events, music, videos, personal stuff, etc.  There exists millions of blogs all over the internet that cover a wide range of subjects, and the regrouping of all these blogs together is known as “The Blogosphere” (sounds cheesy, I know, but what can you do?).

Ok, so whats a Blog Engine?

A Blog Engine is a software application designed to make a website act like a blog with little to no work required on the part of the website owner.  Typically, a blog engine will ask you a few simple questions, such as a blog name and your email address.  If you take a little more time at setup, you can also set the look and feel of the blog with predefined themes, and after no more than 5 to 10 minutes, your blog is up and running and waiting for your first post.

Blog engines are generally offered in two different formats: as a sign-up service (often free, ie: Blogger, Wordpress.com), or as a download for hosting on your own personal servers (ie: Wordpress.org, which is also free, as well as open source).  The main difference between these two types of engines is that unless you are using an open source engine on your own server, you will probably be limited in your ability to personalize the look and feel of your blog, as well as how much memory you have to store your content (ie: if you want to posts videos or large images for example).

What engine does FuglyCode.com use?

When I launched my personal site (Folaji.com), I didn’t want to create a personal blog, but I also didn’t want to build the website from a scratch.  I began looking for a tool that would allow me to publish the type of content I wanted to create, and this being a personal project that was very dear to me, I also wanted as much control over the site and the tool as possible.  I already had a personal web server, and therefore decided that the Wordpress.org engine would be the best for me (I had previously seen it running on MatthewGood.Org and CNN’s Political Ticker, two sites that clearly demonstrated the power of this particular blog engine).

I purchased the Folaji.com domain name, downloaded the Wordpress.org blog engine and installed it on the server, and wrote my first post, all in a matter of a few hours.  At the time, I was new to WordPress and to the different features that their blog engine really offered.  It wasn’t long, however, before I discovered the true power of the blog engine: plug-ins (which I’ll begin talking about in the next post).

That’s all for now!

Well hopefully that cleared up any questions you may have had regarding blog engines.  If you have any questions, feel free to type them in the comments section below.  If you don’t want to leave a comment, you can send your question by email by using the Contact Page.