teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

  This is a blog, which derives from the term ‘web-log’. It’s a simple WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) way of publishing information on the Internet. You simply type in the content (as I am doing now) and your pre-selected style(s) and theme(s) are applied automatically. The easiest way to set up a blog is to use a free service such as Blogger (owned by Google) which guides you through the process and lets you host your blog on their servers. If you want to host it on your own servers later on, there is also the option to do that. The only major downside to this service is the frame they put at the top of the site with ‘next blog’ etc. on it. Another way is to install blogging ’software’ on your web server. This is what I’ve done here with this blog and is what I hope to develop next academic year with my AS-level class. I’m using Wordpress but there are others which you can try-before-you-install at opensourcecms.com. :-D Users can automatically find out if there are updates to your site by using RSS feeds. Software (including Mozilla Firefox) can on the user’s computer can tell when a ’story’ on your site has been updated and alert them to this without them having to constantly check your site. For more detail on RSS check out this BBC page and the Wikipedia entry.