Blog

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.

The term “blog” is derived from “Web log.” “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

As of November 2006, blog search engine Technorati was tracking nearly 60 million blogs.[1] FROM THERE TO HERE

The idea to create a web site that served as a directory for coaching web sites had its origins in the late ‘90’s – in the town of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania. There, sitting in a “state car”, waiting for a “film exchange”, were 3 (now much older) coaches who passed the time by talking about the best football coaching web sites of the day. “Maybe someone will create a database of these sites”, one coach suggested …“Now that would be great”, responded another coach from the back seat.

“Hmmm, a database of coaching web sites, I wonder how much that would cost to build, and how difficult it would be”?, thought the coach/entrepreneur.

FREE WEB SITE TECHNOLOGY – CIRCA 2000

At the dawn of the new millennium, the typical web site had a links page – a feature common to this day, where the user could find and “link” to related sites. Maintaining links pages, however, is (and was) time-consuming and for many not a trivial task. To further complicate matters, especially in those days, coaching web sites frequently moved from “host” to another, fueled by the free-flowing cash of the “dot-com bubble”. As a better deal or better technology became available, web site addresses – their URL’s, changed. Few coaching web sites of that period had an address of a “top-level domain” (Top level domains have names like www.mysite.com, as opposed to mysite.yahoo.com or members.tripod.com/~mysite/index.html ). Poorly maintained links pages make for bad links and user frustration.

During the late 90’s, the web was, relatively speaking, in its infancy. Web sites were usually simple and often ugly. Colored backgrounds, “wallpaper” and long, scrolling pages were commonplace. The better sites avoided the use of too many pictures because “load time” in the days of dial-up access was critically important. Painfully slow “load time” is the kiss-of-death for a web site. Poor, amateurish site design by today’s standards was the order of the day, but we didn’t really know better.

Also, “back in the day”, many of the coaching web sites were hosted at places like America Online (AOL), Geocities (now part of Yahoo), and Tripod. Web site addresses were usually something like members.tripod.com/~jpsp1/sites.html

FREE AND LOW COST WEB SITE TECHNOLOGY

Surprisingly, to this day, a recent search for “free web sites” in Google, Yahoo and MSN revealed that services like Geocities, http://geocities.yahoo.com and Tripod are still around. Not unexpectedly, web sites have “popped up” that serve as directories of free web sites, such as http://www.thefreesite.com.

For those willing to spend a little money, a few “Domain Registrars” offer low cost or free hosting services for simple web sites. Now, the biggest registrars, including my favorite – 1and1.com offer free web sites and free web site creation tools that are surprisingly good and not difficult to use. In fact, 1and1.com built its customer base by offering completely free web sites and web hosting for quite a while – even offering a free “top-level domain” to boot.

THE IDEAL TECHNOLOGY FOR A COACHING WEB SITE

We all have days in our lives – defining moments, that we will never forget, for one reason or other. For this writer, one of those days is Monday January 24th, 1984 – the day Apple Computer introduced the first Macintosh computer and my “first day on the job” at a computer store in Frederick, Maryland.

Click Here to watch the Apple Macintosh 1984 Commercial on Youtube.

The thing about the Apple Macintosh that I remember most is Apple’s advertising slogan – “The Computer for the Rest of Us”. Instantly “resonating” with those who were either turned off, or certainly “not turned on” by the “geek factor” involved in early personal computers from Apple, IBM and others, the Apple Macintosh quickly developed a cult-like following that exists to this day.

FROM APPLE MACS TO THE “SPLIT-BACK VEER”

Shortly after discovering “blog software” in 2005, a football coaching web site came to this writer’s attention..a site that had been created with the same “Blogger” software that was featured in a previous article. As much as its somewhat harder to get excited about new technology for this writer than it was in 1984, a visit to coach Steve Smith’s Splitback Veer Site convinced me that the ease of creating a “blog” made it the ideal way for a coach to build a web site. No “geek required” !

So, it seemed appropriate to recycle that original Macintosh ad slogan, and write Just add water and stir – Web sites “for the rest of us” and spread the word that building and maintaining web sites with tools like Blogger are an ideal way for a coach to build a web site. These tools are free, easy to set up, and built in a way that anyone capable of using a Word Processor can maintain.