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Most bloggers the world over just blog. Their love for writing and/or clicking photos and sharing them on the blog keeps them going. They write about any topic that stokes their imagination - from spiritual and emotional matters to mundane daily life. They post photos, audio clips and videos of whatever they feel is worth sharing. They engage with other like-minded bloggers. Blogging is their love.  Such bloggers make the bulk of the blogosphere. The common bloggers often open a blog to satisfy the itch to share something more serious and permanent than posts on their Facebook or other social networking accounts. They feel they can write better than many others. They feel they have some special viewpoint on life-matters. They want to have a place where they can put their poems written over years or to share their views with the world whenever they are agitated with their government's  actions or something bad happening in the society. They keep the blo...

Some people take wrong actions deliberately; they are crooks and criminals. But some do wrong things inadvertently; they are innocent but are not so in the eyes of the society and the law. This post is to caution such innocent bloggers who inadvertently  break a law, offend people, hurt the blog’s reputation.  Do not copy. Do not copy others’ content be it text or graphic or a/v content. In case you must copy, attribute the source but in many cases this will not be enough, e.g. copying a song or photograph or a research document available only to members. Do not use untested widgets and codes. Putting such matter on the blog could harm the blog in many ways: spurious activity such as stealing private information, key-logging, annoying visitors by forcing them to commercial sites, linking to bad sites, etc. In any case, put only such widgets that will add value to the blog. Do not give personal information about others. Unless it serves a special purpose ...

It is often seen that businesses are guided by their IT advisers to go for large portals and have their presence on social networking sites [right now, very fashionable]. Anything that is more sensible but not ‘in vogue’ soon loses importance in the eyes of such star-grazers. Blogs fall in this category. Yet research by international social-media sites as well as marketers themselves have shown that blogs give lots of value to the blog, which websites and social networking presence do not give.   Blog content is more permanent than that on social networking messages. Social networking sites, especially Facebook and Twitter, create content so fast that unless you are always creating content or are repeating your content again and again (and this could be irritating), your content will be swamped by content that is constantly posted by others.  Blogs have more authority and higher credibility than other platforms. Research shows that a significant num...

This post tells you how to put maps on your blog and also how to share maps elsewhere to help people [e.g. visitors] relate to a location. Thanks to Google Maps, you can easily put your own markings to Google maps and share these with your blog viewers by following the steps given below. But before going to the steps, let’s set your imagination on a roll about the ways in which maps can be used on blogs and elsewhere. The possibilities are many. Some could be like these: This map was made in Google 'mapsengine' and its screenshot pasted here. Did not remove edit/delete guides just to show how it looks on mapsengine. You may want your invitees to know the driving route to your wedding or your daughter’s birthday function or a seminar in which you are to speak. You may want to guide a visitor to a city, giving him routes and glimpses of what to see. You might want to tell your visitor how to plan his trip to your area, depending upon the likely traffic. You ...

Long ago, we published a post on using widgets / gadgets on blogs , and it is one of the most popular posts on ITB. To supplement that, we give here some ideas about which widgets go with which types of blogs. The following widgets look fine on most types of blogs, if used imaginatively and without cluttering the blog with too many and too gaudy ones: blogroll of blogs / websites that have related content; social media sharing buttons / stats; archives; label list; best content on the blog [e.g. most popular posts]; pages [to be displayed in a menu bar or as a sidebar widget]; profile; search box; contact / subscription form [if in simple design] In addition, different types of blogs can benefit from relevant widgets as suggested below: Blogs on political and social happenings [current affairs]: news feed; latest comments; poll Travel blogs: currency converter; distance measurement; map; weather; slideshow; world time; translation  Blogs on photography, history, culture, ...

Updated in 2020 with fresh insights ITB sent a detailed questionnaire to a dozen food bloggers whose food blogs have found place in the Directory of Best Indian Blogs and also to a couple of foreign food bloggers. Some kindly responded, three gave some information in confidence, one wanted only an audio session, two promised but failed to reply to specific questions and some ignored us.  The present post is based on our research of the web on food blogging and the responses we received. We tried to find how food bloggers make blogs, how much money they make from the blog, and what good practices they adopt. We’ve also tried to assess whether globally food bloggers have as many avenues to make money as their US / European counterparts.   Responses on "How to start a food blog and maintain it?" A few bloggers on wordpress.com and blogger.com do have well maintained blogs, but their growth seems to have remained subdued due to constraints of free blogging.  Well-kno...

This the second post in the two-part discussion on kid blogging. In the first post, we talked about why it is a good idea to introduce blogging to children early in life . In the present post, we discuss the do’s and don’ts of engaging children in blogging. Safety and privacy aspects of child blogging 1. Communicate with the kid. Ask him/her about the blog, give advice, offer to help. BUT not in an overbearing manner. Be subtle: be a partner rather than a warden or headmistress – they have enough of these creatures to deal with. 2. Discuss with them the specific subject of web-safety. Tell them, how giving personal information on the web – even to friends – can reach criminals and how they can exploit it. Give the blog a strong password and let it not be shared by many, and let there be some comment moderation. Don’t put a high-quality photo or scan of an identity card on the net. Don’t mention address, school details and phone number of small children. If the child ...