The term “weblog” was coined at the end of 1997 by Jorn Barger. The first web service offering weblogs for an individual was Blogger in 1999, today a property of Google Inc.. However, it took until 2003 that this word was taken as a standard for this kind of medium by mainstream media. This means, all who did have a weblog before 2003, be happy: You may call yourself avant-garde!
A weblog has different core features which distinguish it from other forms of online publications, e.g. online forums:
- chronological, newest is on top of the web page
- comments for each entry
- links to monthly archives
- categories for entries
- search function (although shared with other online mediums, of course)
- embeddable media, like images, videos, etc. these were primarly created manually by html tags
- templates for only a handful of pages, mainly html
From these core features, a plethora of functions emerged: RSS/Atom feeds. Tagging. User management. Blogrolls (a collection of links in the sidebar). Templating. Smart URLs. And whatnot.
In fact, what we use, especially with WordPress or Drupal, these are complete suites which we call today CMS, content management systems. Always backed by a database, e.g. MySQL or MariaDB, which can become very huge over a certain period of time.
From weblogs it was only a small step to the often critised (but important and honest) “citizen journalism”. As you may read up, this wasn’t new either, what was completely new was the fact that an individual, or a group of individuals, could do this online and, hypothetically, reach the whole world. For not spending a penny at all, in the case of Blogger for example.
Today, blogs are everywhere: Be it a corporation displaying news in this form, in a “1-click-publishing-form” like Tumblr, or something else. In different states, e.g. Saudi-Arabia, to this day, Bloggers are executed for telling stories about their reality online.
Blogs may protect freedom of speech anywhere, but they may also be used as a weapon for hatred, like seen in European states where right-wing parties flourish since a couple of years. As always, it’s a double-sided sword. Never forget, that it’s the history of the Internet itself which makes them so.
As you can see: Starting is as easy as at the end of the 90s. What we do here at AETHYX MEDIAE is not that different: All we do is giving you the opportunity to use your own domain for your own medium, your own weblog, your own CMS. And if you didn’t hide under stones in the 90s or early 2000s, you should already own and know what a domain is, right?
We use WordPress since 2005 with success and although we read from time to time it has “flaws”, never experienced one problem with it. It became very powerful, very extensible over time, maybe like a labyrinth for starters.
We want to help you in navigating through this labyrinth! As you may see after a couple of months, or maybe even only weeks, this can be a helluva fun! We even set up WordPress for free when you are age 14 or under! Just have a look what we offer right now, we are sure there is something for anyone:
Feel free to contact us anytime, 24/7! We even accept Bitcoin for those who want to stay anonymous!
We think today it’s more important than ever to be an active individual or organization. You know what the proverb says: What doesn’t go with time, goes after some time. And we don’t think you want, or should, go forever. 😉
