Blog Basics

What is a blog service?

A blog service is a website that lets you create and maintain a blog. It hosts your blog, which means it gives your blog its own web address, or URL. Your blog service also stores your blog's data. Each blog service has different features, but they all let you share your opinions, interests, photos, and more.

There are two basic types of blog services:

• Traditional blog services
  Traditional blog services let you create a website for your blog. Blogs created with these services can include sections, categories, and other features that let you organize your blog posts. These services also include features that let you permit and manage comments, as well as tools to customize the appearance of your blog.
  
  Traditional blog services are best for creating text-heavy blogs, although you can use them for any type of content you want. It's likely that the blogs you're most familiar with use traditional blog services.
  Blogs created with traditional blog services
• Microblogging services
  Microblogging services let you create blog posts that are very short, often consisting of only a line of text, an image, or a link. Most microblogging services are designed to be used in a certain way. For example, Twitter places a 140-character limit on the length of posts. Users can write whatever they want, but they must do so in under 140 characters. Social networking sites that allow sharing, like Facebook, can also be considered microblogging services.
  Examples of microblogging