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Joeychgo.com Book Store > Joeychgo.com books beginning with W
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The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog |
Author: Rebecca Blood
Published: 2002-07-02 |
List price: $15.95
Our price: $10.85
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As of: November 20th, 2008 03:14:10 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 decent and wise counsel
Rebecca Blood loves her craft.
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br /In a world moving as fast as the cyberworld is, a book written in 2002 and reviewed now in 2007 is bound to show its age. The Weblog Handbook does so.
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br /Yet for sheer, innocent (but not inexpert), joyful description of a weblog community that discovered itself almost accidentally between 1999 and 2002, this delightful little book is both a period piece and a still-useful introduction to weblogging for novices.
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br /Seven well-written chapters make the experience of reading this old-media production (ironies abound) a pleasure.
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br /'What is a Weblog?' (chapter one, pp. 1-25) does what its title makes obvious. Along the way, the author utilizes her impeccably accessible prose to highlight the serendipitous, communal, and artistic-creative aspects of most blogs, or at least of those that set the movement afoot.
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br /Blood's second chapter (her generous first-person style makes a reviewer who has never met her refer to her simply as 'Rebecca'; 'Why a Weblog?', pp. 27-37) dispenses wisdom regarding how the beast can take over the life of the beast-er. She indicates three motives for blogging: 'information sharing, reputation building, and personal expression', with careful attention to what the practice does for the writer as well as for the reader. The secret is to align what one already does with one's life as Daily Chronicler of Something.
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br /Chapter three ('Creating and Maintaining Your Weblog', pp. 39-57) puts the 'p' in the first word of the author's subtitle. A newbie in the field will appreciate the absence of condescension as Blood introduces him to the nuts and bolts of his new hobby.
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br /Every successful artist or otherwise public persona experiences that memorable moment when she understands who she is in her given role and why that is a natural place to be. According to Rebecca Blood, bloggers are no different (Chapter four, 'Finding Your Voice', pp. 59-76). Though she gives due attention to the blogger-audience dynamic from several angles, she is very much aware that a blogger who wants her craft to be an integral aspect of her life finds her voice (including the topic upon which she can write knowledgeably) and sticks with it.
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br /Rebecca concludes 'Finding an Audience' (chapter five, pp. 77-99) with this judicious and provocative statement: 'If your objective in keeping a weblog is to gain a wide audience, I advise you to quite today. Webloggers who care about the size of their audience are always unhappy.'
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br /By the time she has worked her way to that declaration, however, she has provided twenty pages of helpful guidance to, well, finding and building an audience. One gains the impression that here is a woman of balance, willing to help you do the thing you want to do but aware that it may turn out to be something other than that. Kudos to her for writing a professional manual that takes itself with appropriate levity.
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br /Blood utilizes her sixth chapter to blend garden-variety journalistic ethics and etiquette with the peculiar idealism of the early weblogging community (chapter six, 'Weblog Community and Etiquette', pp. 101-125). Though she breaks her counsel into 'do not do' and 'do' categories, her approach is not rigid. Rather it is altruistic, idealistic, and communal. Even if those traits do not guarantee a better world, they are better than their alternatives. Blood capably guides the novice through the unspoken expectations that linger like minefields before the new weblogger who is clueless, belligerent, or some combination of the two. Reader beware.
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br /Chapter seven ('Living Online', pp. 127-145), provides Blood with her clearest opportunity to disclose what the experience of doing what the title suggests has meant to this civil and entertaining author of 'Rebecca's Pocket'. As with so much of what she has written here, the basic principle is common sense, even if that uncommon virtue must now be applied to a recent and uncongealed new medium of public disclosure. Living online does not mean that the blogger or his friends, acquaintances, and even the defenseless objects of his drive-by observations do not preserve and need a private life. Blood offers sensible guidance for observing those limits and avoiding the unwelcome intrusions to which technology has added such unwelcome afterlife.
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br /An afterword and several appendices complete a fine introduction to what in the hands of some must be regarded as a craft.
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br /When entering theological seminary many years ago, I was urged to read Helmut Thielicke's A LITTLE EXERCISE FOR YOUNG THEOLOGIANS. That slim, heartfelt volume did not teach anyone how to be a good theologian, yet it punched above its weight by setting a course for decent progress by practitioners of a craft who would now be more aware of self and community than would have been the case had Thielicke kept his pen locked away.
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br /Rebecca Blood's little book does the same for aspiring bloggers. Perhaps all that one has with which to repay her are five well-earned stars.
 A good general non-technical guide that is showing its age
Rebecca Blood of Rebecca's Pocket wrote this 200 page tome in 2002. I finished reading it in 2006. I would say about half of the information provided is dated or anachronistic. While her blog is full of interesting reading material for a technophile, the book needs a major overhaul.
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br /Where is it useful? It's filled with practical advice as the title suggests. Most of that practical advice is more related to being a decent human being than it is to blogging. The Weblog Handbook is a good read if you are ethically challenged or prone to getting into flame wars with other citizens of the virtual reality we called the Net. It's a good read if you want to blog for the long term and aren't sure what sort of writing will make people come back to visit you again and again.
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br /What isn't useful? Blogging is, like most new technology, a rapidly evolving animal, and this book should be updated annually to keep up with the state of the genre. Blogging is just now emerging as a serious alternative source of valuable information about the world. Also, if you're looking for advice that will help you pick the best tool to blog with, this book is not going to help at all. In fact, no book will help much with that. A single author blog, in my opinion, here in 2006, should be written and published, in every case, with WordPress. It's by far the most elegant tool out there.
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br /The Weblog Handbook doesn't mention either it or Movable Type, which is what Rebecca's Pocket is based on.
br /If you need help figuring out how to blog in a civilized fashion, so that you will actually find and keep an audience, then The Weblog Handbook might need to go on your reading list. Other than that, I would say avoid this book unless it is re-released with more relevant information about the current state of blogging. Technology books have a very short shelf life.
br /Rebecca herself is a class act, and so is Rebecca's Pocket. However, a major overhaul of The Weblog Handbook is long overdue.
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br /Update: Rebecca read my review and noted that she has hand coded the site up until six days ago. I never visited her during the hand coding days. Rebecca certainly practices what she preaches in the The Weblog Handbook and is a maven when it comes to dispensing sage advice regarding blogging etiquette.
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br /I still believe that The Weblog handbook would be a more useful tome if it included a chapter or two on current blogging tools and if it was updated annually or every other year.
Nicely Done
Rebecca Blood's account of blogging, her story from the early days to the present, woven into a neatly structured account of what blogging is and how to go about it, is a pleasant read. The book is not technically deep nor philosophically profound, but well written and pitched at an appropriate level for the average starting web-logger.
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br /One of the ways to measure the value of a book is to ask if the reading of it has changed the way one does things. The question is not so much "What did I learn?" but "What impact did this have on what I do?"
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br /The answer, of course, is person bound; a book that has changed the way I behave may have no impact on someone else's actions. Rebecca Blood had a direct influence on my projects. For example, WikiDiction now has a space for linking to relevant quality blogs; added after finishing the chapter "Finding an Audience".
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br /Nice work Rebecca.
Answers the Right Questions
Covers all the information a totally uninformed but interest person would need to know to get started. It is obvious that Rebecca Blood not only enjoys blogging but wants it to be the best it can be. Her chapter, "Living on Line" discusses practical advice such as not writing when one is angry and the ethics of being a part of an on-line community. It was satisfying, enjoyable, thought provoking and useful.
 Makes me want to start my own weblog today!
I like Rebecca's Pocket and have been considering starting my own blog so I purchased this book. The best thing about this book is that Rebecca is obviously very enthusiastic aboout blogging, especially about what it can do for the confidence and writing abilities of the blogger. The book gives some practical questions potential bloggers need to ask themselves before starting a blog. The only reason this book isn't rated higher is that it is a little outdated - but it still has good information.
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br /Did I end up starting a blog after reading a book? Not yet. I still haven't been able to answer for myself the question posed by Rebecca, "If you spend 8 hours + a day in front of the computer for work, are you willing to spend an additional few hours in front of a computer at home writing your blog?"
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