Originally published in the August issue of ComputerBits Magazine.

Ah, the good ol' college days. The parties, the late nights, the stupid stunts... Umm, I mean the pep rallies, the late night studying, the campus chapel. It's almost that time of year when young adults from all over the country will be heading off to college. College can be a bit intimidating, especially for freshman. For many students, this will be the first time they spend any extended time away from friends and family. So how does a student cope and communicate with their friends and family back home?

Well, one of the best ways to stay in touch is through an online diary, or as they're know to the "hip" crowd, weblogs or blogs. Sure, there's still the old fashion letter, telephone, and even email, but a blog gives a student a voice and a window to their college experiences for loved ones to peek through. So what exactly is a blog? A good definition from http://www.bright-id.com is: Slang term for a weblog. A Web log, for the uninitiated, is a popular and fairly personal content form on the Internet. A person's Web log is almost like an open diary. It chronicles what a person wants to share with the world on an almost daily basis.

Blogs have become extremely popular over the last few years mainly because of the format that makes anyone a web publisher. The blog format is designed for quick and easy posts to the Internet with no html knowledge needed. Thanks to blogs, a presence on the Internet isn't just for computer geeks anymore.

So who should have a blog? Well, pretty much anyone who has an idea, opinion, complaint, or any view that they want to share with others. Blogs cover everything from politics, news, culture or just everyday life. Blogs started out as a voice to compete with mainstream media, but has evolved into a voice for anyone with something to say. A blog is a great tool for college students because people who post to a blog have a tendency to share their innermost thoughts more in a blog than they would through an email or phone call. A good example of blogs by college students is at http://www.reediejournals.com/ a collection of personal blogs of students at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Let's set up a blog

So we've talked about what a blog is, now let's go ahead and get one set up.

The first thing we have to do is get our blog set up. A blog can be set up in two ways. You can host a blog on your own server or you can use a blog hosting service. For the technically challenged, the best bet is to use a service that is hosted for you. There are several blog hosting companies that meet this requirement, but since we're talking college students, we'll stick with the free hosting services (Hey, money don't grow on trees). While there are many free services, here are a few of the most popular and their features:

eBloggy

A free blogging host to update and publish your blog easily and quickly, with SMS blogging, group blogs, custom templates, private messaging, signatures, images and more.

tBlog

A blog publishing tool that allows users to add calendar, search, link management, voting, and commenting modules to their sites.

LiveJournal

Website and client software for maintaining an online journal/weblog and keep track of friend's journals.

MoBlog

Take pictures with your camphone and post them directly to the web, instantly! You can post pictures from any country and any cellular or mobile provider. You can also post comments on your pictures, and then customize the look of your pages, no html knowledge needed.

Blogger

Free, automated weblog publishing tool. Post your links and commentary into your form on blogger.com and, with the push of a button, your updated weblog page will be posted to your web site.

Xanga

Xanga is a community of online diaries and journals. You can easily start your own free journal, share thoughts with your friends and meet new friends, too.

These are just a few of the free hosting services; you may want to do a little research to find all the features you're looking for. If you're unsure which service to use or what features you want, I would recommend using Blogger because of the ease of use and setup. The other nice feature of Blogger is that you can make your weblog open to the public or you can keep it private for viewing only by friends and family.

Oh, did I mention that if your blog isn't set up as private, anybody in the world can read it? You'll want to consider this when you set up a blog. Well, nobody will know about my blog if I don't tell them, you say! Well unless the blog is private, you site will usually be "promoted" whenever you post an entry. What promotion means is that there are blog tracking sites that "index" or keep track of blogs. Whenever you update your blog, you "ping" one of these tracking sites letting them know you've made a change. What site gets pinged depends on what hosting service you use. Some of the most popular blog tracking sites are Feedster, Technorati, and Blogstreet. These sites are also a great resource to find interesting blogs to read. Remember there are blogs on about any topic you can think of.

We've got a blog, now what?

Let's talk about what it means to post. If you tried to run a blog on a typical website, you would need to download your blog page through ftp, then update the page which usually means reformatting, html editing, etc., and then ftp the page back to the server. That whole procedure could take you from 30 minutes to an hour depending on many factors. The beauty of a blog it that you can login to a webpage or use a Blog Interface tool (we'll discuss tools in a minute). On that webpage, you type your entry, add links or images, hit submit and voila, you're done. A post can take just a few minutes. A post updates to your blog with your last post showing on top. If you make a mistake, just correct and resubmit. The whole point I'm getting at is that a blog is as easy to use and maintain as writing an email.

Another great thing about a blog is that it can be dynamic. Many blog hosts let you enable comments on your site. You can make a post about what happened at school and your friends and family can post a comment for everyone to read. It's a great way for everyone to communicate no matter where they are.

Posting from your desktop

As we mentioned before, posting is done from a webpage that you log into. Some people prefer to post an entry from their desktop and the upload their post to the server through a client. Using a blogging client is kind of like using an email client like Outlook Express, you simply write the post, hit "submit" and the client takes care of posting to the server for you. You can find a great selection of blog posting tools at http://www.lights.com/weblogs/tools One of the easiest to use and most powerful blog posting clients is w.bloggar. The nice thing about w.bloggar is it works with many blog hosts including Blogger, b2, MovableType, Nucleus, BigBlogTool, BlogWorks and many more. The thing to remember, in most cases you don't need to use a client to post, but I did want to mention it for people who prefer to post from their desktop.

Be sure to share the love

One of the great things about blogging is the community. While many people start a blog to share with friends and family, one of the great thrills of blogging is to get people you've never met to read your blog regularly. The best way to get exposure to your blog is to promote other bloggers. If you like something another blogger says, mention it in a post and be sure to link back to that blog (also known as trackbacks). If there is a blog you particularly like, add them to you're blogroll. Basically a blogroll is a list of your favorite blog sites.

One point I did want to make about blogs, as with anything that gives you a voice, you'll want to use judgment in your posts. Remember, anyone has the ability to read what you post, so if you're not comfortable with mom, dad, or strangers reading your thoughts, you might want to stick an old fashion pen and ink diary. Overall, a blog is a great way for students to keep in touch with mom and dad back home. There's also no rule that mom and dads can't have their own blogs to keep in touch with their college kids. We've basically just cracked the surface of the use of blogs. For more great resources on blogging be sure to check out http://weblogs.about.com/ for some great information.