Archived Weblog Entry - 07/24/2001: "Weblogging: Another Kind of Website"

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07/24/2001 Archived Entry: "Weblogging: Another Kind of Website"

One day in mid-March 2000 Raymond Yee of the Interactive University[1] thought it would be a good idea to buy and experiment with Manila, a web server application capable of supporting literally thousands of weblog websites. A bargain-priced education license was purchased, and Catherine Yoes downloaded and installed it on a rather ordinary NT server. Within weeks the IU experienced a revolutionary change in thinking about what a website is, how they're hosted, what they're used for, how they're built, and who owns them. A year and a half later all of the IU's websites are being produced using weblog technology, our team communications and sharing has been vitally enhanced, a number of our team members are regularly writing on the web, as are many of our University/K-12 projects and the K-12 teachers we work with.

What is a weblog? A weblog is easy to use but less easy to explain, a technology that is becoming more widely used but still remains little known, and a writing tool that supports practicing writers and previous non-writers. Weblogs have a relatively recent but intense history[2], with implications for web publishing, journalism, and education.