Anatomy of a blog

The www is increasingly being crowded with blog entries of all sorts. But the fact is that, most of the bloggers are uploading their blogs in a biased way without knowing the essentials of blogs or anatomy of blog.

Anatomy of a blog.

For effective blogging, it is very much necessary to have a complete knowledge about the anatomy of a blog. The knowledge about blog anatomy will help any blogger to make his/ her blog very much presentable to the readers by not letting them to leave the blog without browsing most of the topics present in the blog.

So, before starting your lesson about anatomy of the blog, it is very important to know that all the blogs have a general anatomy by default which helps the readers of the blogs to get the required information about the blog. Apart from this general blog anatomy we always find some components which are not being same on different blogs. These components are the part of what I would like to call “optional blog anatomy of a blog”.

General anatomy of a blog.

Title entry – Title is the most essential part of the blog, which helps the readers of the blog to know about the topic on which they are going to spend next few minutes on the blog post or whether the blog post page they have landed matches their search query or not.

Posting date and time - The posting date of any blog is the way if providing information about the last update of the blog or the entry date of the blog post the reader is currently viewing. The posting date of a blog bears a great significance regarding the fact that the piece of information they are reading is update or some contemporary matter of the past. The posting date will be stamped automatically with the publishing of a blog. It always remains either at the top of the title or just below it. In some cases blog designers manage to keep at the end of the post to suit with the design of the blog.

Permalink – Whenever you type the URL of any blog, you will get new topic there at the top page and the post previously present there has gone downwards or buried in the stacks of the other recent blog posts. So, how would you go to or bookmark a particular topic on the blog. Yes, it is the Permalink that is the permanent url of any particular topic present there. Whenever you would click on the headline or header of a particular topic, you will get the permanent url link for that specific topic on a certain blog.

Author’s name – Author’s name is the one thing that you will find common in all the blogs over internet. Though the name may be orignal or nickname as set by the author of the blog post. The name of the author is generally displayed along with the date and time stamp.

Comments – Comments are an essential component of any blog. It is a medium for communication between the author and their readers. You will find the comment entry space either as Reply or post comment with text boxes below the post. Sometimes it is kept suppressed below the post. You may reply to those post by clicking on the link comments followed by the number (number of comments entered). This link may present either at the top or at the bottom of the post adjacent to the content depending upon the type of theme used.

Blog Archive – You may called Blog archive as the record keeper of any blog. The blog visitor can trace out the activity of the blog from this archive on day, week, month or year basis. The blog archive may be customized to show in hierarchy or drop-down pattern.

Optional anatomy of a blog.

By the term variable anatomy of any blog I mean to say that there are some components of blogs which are not present there as a compulsory component of blog but may vary with blog to blog. This difference is due to the type of theme and some widgets used there. Lets us discuss them.

Menubar – Menubar is an optional component of blog anatomy. You may find it in some blogs whereas others does not have it. It depends upon the theme or template you have chosen for the blog. These menu and sub-menus generally represent the categories and sub-categories of the blogs arranged at the top in menubar. Some of the blogs may have two level menubar, the top level generally contains the pages name.

Sidebar or column – You may have got very much adapted with many blogs with sidebar or two/three column either on the right or left side of the content.These sidebar or columns holds many other important components for blog navigation and designing.

RSS – Reader’s syndication is another important part of optional blog anatomy. You can get it on the blog in varied form starting from reader’s count, subscribe to reader, email subscription etc. This is used to help the reader to get subscribe to the blog and get the latest updates on the blog through email or the reader being followed by the reader for blog popularity.

Recent post/ recent comments – Recent post is the most important quick navigation link provider of the blog through which the reader can access the new updated blog-post on the same blog without too much navigating to reach it whereas recent comments helps the readers to know about the views from other readers of the blog about its authenticity.

So, the anatomy of a blog is bit simple to understand for implementation of better blogging techniques.