On a recent TV show i watched, one of the questions was about words in the Oxford English Dictionary.One of the words that has been added to the latest edition is ‘Blogosphere’ meaning the Blogging community or things within the Blogging community.This got me thinking of other words and phrases that are only used within the Blogosphere.Blogging has been around for years and has built a large Glossary of terms you will have encountered or will encounter in the future.To be a proper Blogger you have to be able to talk the talk, so lets look at some of the most popular terms…
Blogging Glossary
Atom
Another popular feed format developed as an alternative to RSS.
Autocasting
Automated form of podcasting that allows bloggers and blog readers to generate audio versions of text blogs from RSS feeds.
Audioblog
A blog where the posts consist mainly of voice recordings sent by mobile phone, sometimes with some short text message added for metadata purposes. (cf. podcasting)
Blawg
A law blog.
Bleg
An entry in a blog requesting information or contributions.
Blog Carnival
A blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Most blog carnivals are hosted by a rotating list of frequent contributors to the carnival, and serve to both generate new posts by contributors and highlight new bloggers posting matter in that subject area.
Blog client
(weblog client) is software to manage (post, edit) blogs from operating system with no need to launch a web browser. A typical blog client has an editor, a spell-checker and a few more options that simplify content creation and editing.
Blogger
Person who runs a blog. Also blogger.com, a popular blog hosting web site. Rarely: weblogger.
Bloggernacle
Blogs written by and for Mormons (a portmanteau of “blog” and “Tabernacle)”. Generally refers to faithful Mormon bloggers and sometimes refers to a specific grouping of faithful Mormon bloggers.
Bloggies
One of the most popular blog awards.
Blogroll
A list of other blogs that a blogger might recommend by providing links to them (usually in a sidebar list).
Blogosphere
All blogs, or the blogging community. Also called blogistan or, more rarely, blogspace.
Blogware
A category of software which consists of a specialized form of a Content Management System specifically designed for creating and maintaining weblogs.
The BOBs
The largest international blog awards.
Collaborative blog
A blog (usually focused on a single issue or political stripe) on which multiple users enjoy posting permission. Also known as group blog.
Comment spam
Like e-mail spam. Robot “spambots” flood a blog with advertising in the form of bogus comments. A serious problem that requires bloggers and blog platforms to have tools to exclude some users or ban some addresses in comments.
Desktop Blogging Client
An off-line blog management (posting, editing and archiving) tool
Fisking
To rebut a blog entry in a line-by-line fashion.
Flog
A portmanteau of “fake” and “blog”. A blog that’s ghostwritten by someone, such as in the marketing department.
J-blog
A journalist blog.
A blog with a Jewish focus.
Milblog
Term for blogs written by members or veterans of any branch of military service – Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. A contraction of military and blog.
Moblog
A portmanteau of “mobile” and “blog”. A blog featuring posts sent mainly by mobile phone, using SMS or MMS messages. They are often photoblogs.
Mommy blog
A blog featuring discussions especially about home and family.
Multiblog
A blog constructed as a conversation between more than two people.
Permalink
Permanent link. The unique URL of a single post. Use this when you want to link to a post somewhere.
Phlog
Type of blog utilising the Gopher protocol instead of HTTP
A Photoblog. A portmanteau of “photo” and “blog”.
Photoblog
A blog mostly containing photos, posted constantly and chronologically.
Pingback
The alert in the TrackBack system that notifies the original poster of a blog post when someone else writes an entry concerning the original post.
Podcasting
Contraction of “iPod” and “broadcasting” (but not for iPods only). Posting audio and video material on a blog and its RSS feed, for digital players.
Post
An entry written and published to a blog.
Post Slug
For blogs with common language URLs, the post slug is the portion of the URL that represents the post. Example: http://domain.com/2010/01/this-is-the-post-slug
RSS
Really Simple Syndication is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.
RSS aggregator
Software or online service allowing a blogger to read an RSS feed, especially the latest posts on their favourite blogs. Also called a reader, or feedreader.
RSS feed
The file containing a blog’s latest posts. It is read by an RSS aggregator/reader and shows at once when a blog has been updated. It may contain only the title of the post, the title plus the first few lines of a post, or the entire post.
Spam blog
A blog which is composed of spam. A Spam blog or “any blog whose creator doesn’t add any written value.”
Slashdot effect
The Slashdot effect can hit blogs or other website, and is caused by a major website (usually Slashdot, but also Digg, Metafilter, Boing Boing, Instapundit and others) sending huge amounts of temporary traffic that often slow down the server.
Subscribe
The term used when a blogs feed is added to a feed reader like Bloglines or Google. Some blogging platforms have internal subscriptions, this allows readers to receive notification when there are new posts in a blog.
Search engine friendly URLs
or, for short, SEF URLs, implemented with a Rewrite engine.
Templates
Templates, used on the “back end” of a blog that work together to handle information and present it on a blog.
Theme
CSS based code that when applied to the templates will result in visual element changes to the blog. The theme, as a whole, is also referred to as a blog design.
TrackBack
A system that allows a blogger to see who has seen the original post and has written another entry concerning it. The system works by sending a ‘ping’ between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert.
Vlog
A video blog; a vlogger is a video blogger (e.g. someone who records himself interviewing people of a certain field).
Warblog
a blog devoted mostly or wholly to covering news events concerning an ongoing war.
Weblog
the unshortened version of ‘blog’.
