Blogging Terminology Glossary
Welcome to our 40 Terms of Super Blogging!
This glossary is a work-in-progress. When completed, the blogging terminology glossary will have 40 terms for your super blogging pleasure! For now, comments are closed for this page, but we will open it up for comments once all the terms have been added.
Each of these blogging terms are being provided from a diverse variety of bloggers, and each term is followed by a link to their blog for their author credits. Some of the links will take you to a more in-depth description of the term they chose to define, while other participants preferred a link to their blog home page.
If you found this glossary to be of value to you, please stop by and visit the bloggers below who contributed to the glossary. You may also wish to consider creating a link to this glossary from your blog, which could benefit your readers. Thank you, and thanks again to the contributors of this project! 
If you would like to contribute to this glossary you may contact us for details on how to participate. We will only take entries from bloggers with a link going to your blog (preferably on your own domain). We would also ask that you link back to us by providing a link either to this glossary, our home page or a specific blog post. The link may be one from one of your other blogs as well. Please use our contact link above to send us an email to get the details.
Anchor Text
The text that a person clicks on to visit a page on your site. By default “anchor text” is blue text with an underline. For example, this is anchor text. In the previous sentence, the text “this is anchor text” is an example of anchor text.
George
Learn about the importance of anchor text.
Archives
An “archive” is a system to store posts for future reference. Since blogs began as online journals, posts were first archived in a reverse chronological order. Posts are usually auto-archived by first the day, the week, the month, and finally the year.
Most blogging platforms display archives in the sidebar. Once preferences are set, you can pretty much forget about how archives function. The concept is similar to automatic backups of important data. Just think of a blog archive as a record, or storage for future reference.
Michael
DigitalNomad
Author Credits
Just because you are a blogger does not mean that you do not have to give credit where credit is due. That is where author credits come into play. If you are using content from anywhere, you must site your source whether it be another blog or CNN.com. It is just like writing a paper you would have done for school. (It just does not have to be as formal.) You will also see author credits on many of the open source templates that bloggers use. They will list the designer in the footer.
Lisa
My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings
(Note: The two lines above with the author name and link to her site is one method of showing “author credits”)
Blaudience
This sounds like a bad word, but is in fact not. Blaudience is quite simply the people who read your blog. Your blog audience.
Sara
Please Visit Sara’s fibromyalgia experiment blog.
Blog
A blog (short for web log or weblog) is an online journal intended for public consumption. Before blogs, websites were mostly static (fixed content), but a blog can be constantly updated allowing a dynamic way to communicate. Text, images, sounds, and video are often used to enable the author to get a message across.
Communities large and small form around a blog as readers comment and content is syndicated. Anyone can create a blog on any subject thanks to a variety of web host companies whose interface allows users to simply type in text and hit “publish.”
Deb
Towards 2012
Blog Carnival
An activity conducted by bloggers producing results similar to that of an online magazine, with many contributing authors, publishing on a regular schedule, and having a common idea or topic linking a series of posts together.
Each participating blogger posts a topic presented by the carnival’s host, and includes within their post a permalink; linking the participants post back to the originator’s post.
The originator of the carnival then collects the url’s of all participating blogger’s and publishes them on his/her blog in whatever fashion they choose, often with commentary and conclusions.
Wendy
A great place to visit for homeschooling adventures.
Blog Challenge
A blog challenge is a creative writing prompt specifically for bloggers, which serves as a tool to promote fresh writing inspiration for a blog post topic. The blogger who starts a specific blog challenge determines the topic for the challenge, and may perhaps name other specifics to be covered in the blog challenge.
Bloggers who then wish to participate in the blog challenge create a new blog post on their own blog. Their blog post is based on the topic and any other specifics described by the blog challenge.
Tammara
A blogger who loves a blog challenge!
Blog Day
Blog Day is an annual event on August 31st (started in 2005) that is dedicated to bloggers from around the world. The purpose of Blog Day is for all bloggers around the world to recommend other blogs to their readers and visitors to increase exposure.
Every blogger wanting to participate in Blog Day is required to recommend at least five blogs. It is recommended that each blogger choose blogs that are of a different interest or topic to their own blog. For more information on Blog Day visit http://blogday.org/.
Sandy
www.fightingfatigue.org
Blogger
A blogger is a person who writes in a blog online. A blog can be an online diary or it can be informational. A blogger may personalize their blog with stories and pictures. Some bloggers like to share their interests, passions and research. Other bloggers use their blog to make money. Above all a blogger is able to create his or her blog in their own way with their own personal stamp on it.
Diane
Authentic Celebrity Designer Handbags For Rent
Blogging
Blogging is to write on a weblog, (which confusingly is also known by its shortened form of blog). You can blog about anything: news, your family, your views, your personal life. You can take a topic, from movie stars to stars in the heavens, and blog about them in infinite detail. You can write as part of a bigger site, and may even share the blogging space with other bloggers. You can blog just for yourself or for as many readers as you can possibly imagine. Blogging is to write!
Mike Crowl
Learn about writing random notes.
Blogroll
A set of links on a blog to other blogs. One also can be either for a specific group, purpose or even to just a list of friends blogs. The most popular kind however are for members of the same community to display links to each member.
Sharon
Sharon’s blog
Captcha
A “Captcha” is a bot blocker. The squiggly letters/words you seen when logging in or registering for a website. It’s a human test. If you can enter these characters correctly, congratulations — you are presumed to be human. If you can’t enter them correctly you’re either not human or don’t have prefect eyesight. Fortunately for those of us who have less than perfect eyesight, you can usually keep doing the test until you get it right.
Maggie
Wiccania
Categories
Categories allow you to organize your blog posts by grouping similar topics together, creating a useful tool for your reader. In a sense, the categories section of your blog becomes it’s table of contents. By creating categories, you are giving your reader the opportunity to find related posts which may interest them.
Take a look at your blog layout. How much space do you have for your categories? Do you need to keep your categories short and to-the-point or do you have room to give a more detailed explanation?
After you have determined what your blog layout will allow, the next thing to do is create those categories! When creating your category titles, think about the content on your blog. What type of readers are you hoping to attract? Remember, this should be a tool for your reader so keep your titles clear and relevant. Avoid using vague titles such as “misc” and “other”, which will leave the reader to guess the content of the posts.
Take a few minutes to create your own category titles and organize or posts. Your readers will thank you.
Billie
A Peaceful Serenity
Comment Moderation
Comment moderation is a feature, on most blogging platforms, allowing you to approve or decline any comments posted by readers before it goes live. This is useful if your blog has a tendency to attract a lot of heated discussions, and you’d like to keep everything under control. People will be more careful of what they write if they know it might not get published.
Simon
Learn about money and finances at Simon’s Money Notes.
Comment Spam
Comment spam is the act of posting random comments on blogs, which are unrelated to the topic or promoting URL links leading to sites containing adult content, drugs such as viagra etc.
Sophia
Healthy Perspectives
Do Follow / No Follow
The “no follow” attribute, created back in late 2004-early 2005, by Google and quickly adopted by all the major search engines, was a stroke of genius at the time; or at least in theory. The point being to stop, or at least slow down the massive link spammers that abound the ‘net; especially on Blogs.
By placing rel=”nofollow” within the anchor text of links, it tells the search engines to ignore the links, not giving them any credit for the link itself. The attribute works pretty much flawlessly, which now presents a big problem especially for bloggers.
Hence! The DoFollow attribute…a blog pluigin…was created. This plugin disables the nofollow attribute and tells readers that it’s ok to leave comments, and they will be rewarded by the search engines. Woohoo! This became so popular that a “movement” was formed.
Dennis Edell
Direct Sales Web Marketing
Footer
A line of information that you put at the bottom of a web page. It could ontain links to your homepage, archives, contact information, popular posts and/or recent posts.
Lisa
Bits and Pieces
Link and Blog Challenge
A Link and Blog Challenge is a blog challenge based on a keyword or key phrase surrounding a specific topic, combined with a blog post link exchange strategy between the participating members of that topic.
The blogger who begins the Link and Blog Challenge is the one who declares what the blog post topic and keyword or key phrase shall be for the blog challenge. The same keywords are then used to create the link going from one participants relevant blog post to the next participant, which results in blog posts being linked from within relevant content.
Tammara Nelson
Founder of Link and Blog Challenge, where blog link exchange is fun as a game!
