In this lesson we will learn how to add a diary system to your website. Before getting into the "how to add a diary", a discussion on "why to create one" is in order. A diary doesn't have to be like a Dear Diary type thing, and reality it is more often used like a What's New page which describes what's going on around the website. Typically these type of diaries are placed on the HOME or main index page. They help surfers quickly navigate to new things on the website and will encourage repeat visitors and bookmarkers, because as surfers we always like to find out what's new at a site without taking the extra time to surf around and see what has changed or has been newly added.

There are several commercial scripts out there which will provide a full diary system and of course I could show you how to create one of your own, but alas someone out there has thought of folks who wanted to quickly and rather painlessly add a diary system to their website without messing around with any programming. This system is called a blog.

As of the time I write this lesson, blogs are becoming the rage in the tech to semi-tech community and I set one up recently at my personal site, http://www.tdavids.com/blogger/ so you can see what a blog looks like from the website view.

What is a blog? "... A blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically—like a what's new page or a journal." - from blogger.com

You can visit my personal blog which I use to write comments entirely using comment codes. It's not exactly updated very frequently as you will see, but it demonstrates that I do indeed have a working blog.

Blogger pros and cons

Cons: The downside to using this solution is that everything is processed through blogger.com. Therefore if the blogger system is currently down or unavailable, you will not get the updates through to your website using their system. The content is served on your website in the blogger example we are employing, but when you post a new blog entry, it still requires you to submit those changes through their server (so your blog can be catalogued and displayed on the official blogger website). There is a 100k text limit per month for the blogger service. 100k of text is a LOT of text. Unless you are an extremely prolific blogger, you will not pass this limit. You can get more than 100k text per month by upgrading to the Pro blogger service (I will discuss this more in a little bit).

Pros: You do not have to know how to do any CGI, PHP, ASP, etc scripting. You can set your own blogger up in less than 5 minutes. 

Ok, now let's examine how easy it is to setup your own blogger. 

STEP 1. Who is going to host the blogger?

If you don't mind giving up some ad space at the top of your blogger (sure you do) then you can get free hosting at blogspot.com. We're not going to get into how to use that free service because you can follow the instructions on that site and also, depending on when you take this course, maybe that service will no longer be available (or it won't be free/ad-supported any longer). We have seen just way too many free, ad-supported services on the web go out of business (to help ensure that Script School doesn't become one of these virtual dinosaurs please visit http://www.scriptschool.com/faq.html and see how you can help).

So to summarize, these are your 4 hosting choices:

1. host on free service at blogspot.com
2. host using other free host providers (keep in mind that some do not allow adult content if you are going to use adult-oriented content).
*3. host on your own paid virtual hosting website
*4. host on your own paid dedicated hosting website

STEP 2. Decide upon a location for your blogger on your website and create the folder that your blogs will be created and updated in.

If you have your own dedicated hosting, you can contact your host and have a special FTP folder setup for your blogger. This way you do not have to enter in your FTP password each time you use the blogger. I don't recommend that you enter in FTP information on a virtual host directly into blogger. This would give them access to your FTP information for your entire website and no matter how good they say their security is, you could be compromised. 

If you don't have dedicated hosting -- or your virtual host does not allow you to setup separate FTP access folders within your account -- then you just need to enter in the password every time you want to update your blogger. Again, even though you can have the blogger system remember your FTP password, I do not recommend that you use this functionality unless you have had your host setup a special folder for FTP access for your blogger only.

Once you have decided which directory on which website and with which host the blogs will be placed in, you just create that directory and then move to the next step.

STEP 3. Go to blogger.com and create your blog.

The next step is to visit blogger.com and create your blog. The create form at the time of this writing was located here: http://www.blogger.com/blog_new.pyra but it might have changed, so go to the main blogger.com website and follow the link from the menu if this link doesn't work -- this will walk you through a step-by-step process where you can choose the title of your blog, description and whether it is public or private and what your template will look like. Private means it will not show up in the blogger directory. Keeping your blog public can be an additional way to attract interest to your website. You can edit this information later, using the comprehensive and handy blogger edit menu (see figure 1).

Note: at the time of this writing this service was free, but as mentioned with the blogspot.com free hosting service, blogger.com may also have decided to start charging for their service. They do offer a Pro blogger service which, again at the time of this writing, costs $35 a year. With this service you can get additional features listed on this page: http://pro.blogger.com/ and not be required to put up a recip to them. The choice is yours.

STEP 4. Launch the blogger edit menu (see Figure 1) and create your first blog entry.

The blogger edit menu is available at blogger.com. You can find it down the right hand side where your blogs should be listed. You can have more than one blog, so if you want to setup additional blogs when you learn how to setup your first one then you just need to repeat step #3.  

Figure 1. The blogger edit menu

While the blogger edit menu is fairly intuitive, we'll go through the high points of the interface. The top part is your working area. Here you can type out what will be placed in your blog. You can add hyperlinks, images and more to this area or just type out standard text. The bottom left corner is your active blog area. This is where items are that have been moved from the working area to this area. To do this you use the "post" button on the toolbar beneath the blogger logo. To actually transfer the blog to your blog on your website you need to "publish" it. You can move your blog entry from the working area to the active blog area by clicking the "post & publish" button. The lower right corner will allow you to display past blog posts. You can edit any blog entry using this system. Everything, in fact, that you need to do with adding new content, or editing old/existing content with your blog is here.

The settings button on the toolbar will allow you to change the FTP info for your blog and other information such as: basic settings, order of the blog (chronologically or reverse-chronologically), how long before archiving, path to the blog, etc. Until you have verified that your blog is working properly, I wouldn't recommend adjusting these settings.

So let's type: "this is my first blogger entry" into the working area and press the post button. You should see what you've typed move into the active blogger area.

STEP 5. Publish your blog

You should now be able to publish your blog entry that is sitting in the active area. Press the Publish button on the blogger toolbar. Depending on your settings you might be prompted to enter your FTP password. Enter the password if prompted and your blog should now be published. Every time you want to add to your blog you just repeat STEP 3-5.

Editing your blog template - Changing the appearance of your blog

If you decide that you want to edit your blog template, this is easier to do. This is the template that will be used for your archives and home blog page on your website. Just click on the templates button and you'll see what tags you can use to manually edit (advanced users). These tags are as follows for quick reference:

• <$BlogItemBody$> - The text of your blog entry.
• <$BlogItemAuthor$> - Your name -- or the author of the blog entry if it is a multiple-user blog
• <$BlogItemAuthorNickname$> - The nickname of the author of a post.
• <$BlogItemAuthorEmail$> - The email address of the blog author
• <$BlogItemAuthorURL$> - The homepage URL of the blog author
• <$BlogItemDateTime$> - The time/date of the blog entry. You can change the time/date format using Blog Properties
• <$BlogItemNumber$> - The ID number for the blog entry.
• <$BlogItemURL$> - The URL associated with the blog entry.

Summary

Ok, here's a summary of everything you need to do to setup your blog:

STEP 1. Create a folder on your webserver for blogger
STEP 2. Visit blogger.com and register for a new account
STEP 3. If you don't have your own webserver and/or don't mind ads on your blogger, then you can always use blogspot.com which is ad-supported. It's up to you.
STEP 4. Create your blogger using the links on the blogger.com site, choosing a template, title and description of your blogger.
STEP 5. Post and publish!

(OPTIONAL) Those with dedicated hosting can contact the host of your website and request that FTP access only be granted to a specific folder on your website (recommended). Perhaps something like yourdomain.com/blogger or blog.yourdomain.com. Again you can view my blog at http://www.tdavids.com/blogger/ for reference. 

TO-DO Assignment #1: Create a blog on and for your website using either paid or free hosting and post the link to your blog in the week #1 to-do folder.

WEEK 1 discussion and questions - this is where you ask questions about this course material and post your weekly "to-do" assignment.
WEEK 1 Workshop Review Tuesday July 16, 2001 5:00 PM Eastern / 2pm Pacific - we will review this course material in a LIVE IRC workshop. You can get here by using the JAVA link above or by using your favorite IRC client and pointing to: irc.webmasterlive.com #netsurprise
Script School Live WEEK 1 Audio Review Friday July 19, 2002 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00PM Pacific - This is the audio recap for the course material where you can call in and ask Q & A LIVE on the radio
Script School Live CHAT (Java) irc.webmasterlive.com #scriptschool (IRC)

In lesson #2 We'll be exploring forms and how to create a basic form mailer system that will email you the results of any form that the surfer fills out.

TDavid is co-owner, programmer and webmaster for several sites devoted to programming including his own http://www.tdscripts.com/  He has done custom programming in various programming languages for companies all over the world. Every Friday at 2pm PST you can catch his weekly radio show dedicated to the technical side of webmastering and programming at http://www.scriptschool.com/radio