View source for OOP344 Effective Blogging

==Effective Blogging==

To blog is to send a message to a community and ultimately the internet, on something that matters to you, or you think will matter to someone out there. It talks about what you experienced, how you felt, how you solved a problem, or how you got stuck in solving a problem, etc....

===A Bad blog=== 

"Hello bloggers! here I come!"

This as a blog, does not accomplish anything but telling to your prof. "hey , I blogged, give me my mark".

===Make the blog interesting===

Make your blog interesting, so others don't bore to death reading it.

For example if you have solved a challenge, mentioned in class, don't just write the steps as:

 

Step 1:

  Code

Step 2:

  Code

Etc...

 

Be more descriptive as:

 

To start I thought it would be a good idea to do "whatever" so first I did:

  Code...

Then to solve the next problem that was "blah blah" I had to do this:

  Code...

And so on....

===Don't be a perfectionist===

Although good English(correct structure, grammer, etc..) is a big plus, but blogging is usually an "informal" thing. So you don't need to proof read your paragraph 95 times and then don't post it because you don't know if it is perfect or not. 

Up to a reasonable degree, make sure your spelling is right and your blog is clear and gives the message it is supposed to give and then post it.

===How long a blog should be?=== 

Your blog does not necessarily need to be lengthy, but rather interesting, informative and "to the point".

===Links in a blog=== 

If your blog does not have links in it, then usually it is not worth posting.

Write your blog, finish it, and then while reviewing it, change all "linkable" phrases to links pointing to their related material;

"Yesterday '''''Fardad''''' gave us a '''''challenge problem''''' to solve. Initially I could not solve the problem, but reading '''''the notes he wrote on Sep. 15th''''', I found out that I can easily solve it like this:

  Code....."

In the text above, in a blog:

"Fardad" should be a link to "fardad's wiki page"

"a challenge problem to solve" should be a link to the description of the challenge.

If I just mentioned the challenge and it is not written anywhere, then go to wiki and add it yourself to the to do list of corresponding week on the OOP344 Wiki page, or any where you find it fit.

"the notes he wrote on sep 15th" should be a link my website where the notes actually are.

===Title of a blog===

It is very important how you choose a title for your blog. Make it interesting and related to the topic so the search engines can find it easily and people seeing the title in a list become interested in opening and reading them.

===Any more points?===

Let us know if there is more to do to make a blog interesting...

===Links to more...===

*[http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/12/30/tens-tips-for-writing-a-blog-post/ Ten Tips for Writing a Blog Post]
*[http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/07/10/nine-signs-of-an-effective-blog-post/ Nine Signs of an Effective Blog Post]
*[http://www.chrisbrogan.com/writing-effective-blog-posts/ Writing Effective Blog Posts]