Philatelic Blogging
Allen Bohart, Compulatelist
Blogging is a phenomenon that has taken the Internet by storm in the last couple of years. Blogs have had an effect on traditional news media, the business world, and even governmental organizations. Now, we stamp collectors have an opportunity to affect the world of philately through this new medium called the blog.
What is a blog, you may wonder? The word blog is short for web log, and basically describes an online journal. The person who maintains the journal is a blogger and when he is adding to the journal he is blogging.
Philatelic blogging, therefore, would be maintaining an online journal about philately or philatelic activities. As some of you may already know, and the rest of you are about to find out, I maintain a philatelic blog at www.philatelictidbits.com.
Author’s Philatelic Tidbits blog.
Usually, I submit new material to the blog every weekday and sometimes on the weekend if the mood strikes me. The focus of my blog is philatelic news in the mainstream media and new issues stories. Occasionally, I will voice an opinion or two about some hot topic in the philatelic world as well.
That is the beauty of a blog: The blogger has the ultimate control of what content to put on the site. There are several philatelic blogs around the Internet and each has a slightly different approach in it’s content. Some blogs are focused on the blogger’s personal philatelic endeavors, some are focused on a particular specialty, and some just report news. In all instances, however, a blog is a creative outlet for the person who maintains it, and is usually a labor of love.
The primary purpose of this article is to explain how one goes about setting up a blog, if one so wishes. There are a couple of approaches to creating a blog, and the choice is largely dependent on the individual’s technical skills and level of desire to control the content and feel of the blog. Another consideration is the amount of money one wishes to dedicate to this blogging endeavor.
The first approach to building a blog is to use one of the free sites available out there on the Internet. Some examples of these sites are blogspot.com, blogger.com, and blogwise.com.
All of these sites offer template-based site builder’s that can literally get you set up and running in a matter of minutes. These sites require no web design skills whatsoever, and allows the user to concentrate on putting out content without worrying about the technical details.
There are limitations, however, to the cookie-cutter (as I call them) blog sites. One major limitation is the URL you are forced to use when utilizing one of these sites. A prime example of this type of blog can be found at parkinlot.blogspot.com. This is a site set up and maintained by Bob Parkin. Now wouldn’t it be much easier to locate and remember if it had a URL like www.parkinlot.com?
Another limitation to these types of blogs is that the user is forced to use the color schemes and layouts offered by the blogging site. There is usually some customization allowed, but it is very limited, and, in my opinion, very limiting.
I originally set up Philatelic Tidbits on blogspot.com. Adding text to your blog is easy as creating an e-mail but within a couple of days I became very frustrated with it and moved on to bigger and better things.
Anyone who wishes to set up a blog and would like some assistance or advice should feel free to contact me at allen.bohart@gmail.com 
