Build A Blog

Anatomy of a Blog – Jargon Buster

Written by Mandy

I am looking at this from an absolute beginners point of view, who wants to get up to speed as soon as possible and miss out the annoying search for information.

So lets get back to basics and break a blog down into it’s component parts. Below is a screenshot of our test blog using the Kubrick theme which comes as default with every new Wordpress blog, Build a Blog with Wordpress:

1. This is the blogs header area, it contains the blogs title and tagline and can also display images. The header is the first element of your blog that a reader will see, and with this theme it includes the blogs title and tagline.

2. This is the content area for the blog where your posts will appear. With the most recent post at the top and the rest in date order underneath. Blog posts can be just text but they can also contain images, video’s or podcasts.

3. This is the blogs sidebar where you can add widgets to add functionality to your blog. For instance with this theme as a default you get a link to the blogs pages, archives and categories. The blogroll is a list of your favourite links and the meta widget is a quick link to log into your blog. Or you could add widgets for Twitter, Flickr, Facebook or advertising the list goes on.

4. Is the blogs footer with a link to RSS subscriptions for posts and comments to the blog, and a link to Wordpress.com. But this can differ depending on the theme. You can also edit it to include copyright information.

Now take a look at the test blog with a different theme installed in this case the Pool theme, notice the slight difference in layout between the themes:

1. Header area, this time it just contains the blog’s title.

2. This is the blogs navigation bar containing tabs for the blogs pages, these can be added to as you build your blog. The navigation bar normally appears below the header but in some themes it can be above.

3. The content area including blog post and title, tags, category, date the post was published and a ‘leave a comment’ link. Commenting is a very important part of blogging letting you interact with your readers easily and vice versa.

4. The sidebar, depending on your blogs theme it could have 1, 2 or even 3 sidebars.

5. The footer, this footer has a link to the Theme developer’s site.

There are around 80 different themes to choose from with Wordpress.com, these themes can be customised and changed to make your blog look exactly how you want it to, which makes Wordpress extremely flexible to use. But the raw elements of a blog will always stay the same.

Next time we’ll look at how to select and change a theme with Wordpress.com

Mandy

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