General description of Blogs Status » 3.In Progress

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(7.19) Documentation » Features » Blog

Blogs

An abbreviation for Weblog, the term "blog" refers to a collection of related posts, which are sorted (by default) in reverse chronological order (the most recent posts are shown first).

Some blogs have a single author, who uses the blog to keep what amounts to an online diary: a day-to-day record of the individual's varied thoughts, reflections, and pertinent Web links. Other blogs contain posts from two or more authors; typically, these blogs focus on a more or less well-defined topic, such as sci-fi movie reviews. In schools and colleges, blogs are increasingly used to facilitate student journals.

TikiWiki's Blogs feature enables users to enjoy all the best features of weblogs (including RSS output, trackback pings, and remote posting via Blogger-compatible programs, such as w.Bloggar), but without the hassle (and, often, the expense) of using commercial blogging services.

A TikiWiki site can be set up to display a blog as its home page (see General Admin ). This means you can use TikiWiki as an alternative to less-feature-rich alternatives, such as Moveable Type.

Feature Overview

TikiWiki's Blogs feature enables administrators to set up as many blogs as they like, or administrators can give users permission to create their own blogs. Blogs can be accessed by listing them (Menu/Blogs/List Blogs) or by creating a link to one or more blogs in a custom menu.

Blog configuration options include the number of posts to display, whether other users are allowed to post in the blog, and whether searches and comments are allowed. In addition, the blog heading can be edited; by default, it displays the date of creation and last modification, the total number of posts and visits, and a figure that sums up the blog's activity level.

When posting to a blog, users can choose between the textarea or WYSIWYG editors; posting options include title and one or more trackback URLs. (See "About Trackback," below.) Users can also take advantage of TikiWiki's implementation of Blogger's XMLRPC protocol, which enables users to use a Blogger-compatible program (such as wBloggar ) to post to their TikiWiki blogs (see "About XMLRPC," below).

About Trackback

The Trackback protocol, developed by Moveable Type, provides a blog author with a very convenient, low-bandwidth way to tell other blog authors that their posts have been referenced and discussed. For example, suppose you've just read a post on blog A. You post to your blog (Blog B) and discuss the Blog A post. When you save your post, you include the trackback URL. TikiWiki then sends a trackback ping (actually, it's not a ping, but a short message conforming to the Trackback protocol) to Blog A; Blog A's author can then see that you've posted something that's related. Now suppose the Blog A author posts something about YOUR post. When you look at your post, you'll see a list of trackback pings (including the page title, URL, and blog name). For more information on using trackback, see Blog User.

About XMLRPC

TikiWiki implements the XMLRPC standard developed by Blogger, a popular commercial blogging site. This standard is an wp:Application_programming_interface, which means that any application conforming to the standard can upload content to Blogger — or any service that conforms to the same API on the receiving end. For this reason, any application that correctly implements the Blogger XMLRPC API can be used to post and edit content in Tiki blogs. To use Blogger XMLRPC API with a Tiki, enable it in the Features panel. You can then use Tiki blogs using dekstop applications like wBloggar.