An introduction to weblog terms for weblog readers

一篇不错的介绍blog相关知识的文章，全文在这里

[This article is now also available in French. 5 March 2003]

The audience for Pepys’ Diary can be split into two groups: Those who write and/or read weblogs and those who have come to the site purely because of an interest in Pepys. The former group are familiar with the language of the weblog world (Weblog, Blog, RSS, Trackback, Permalink, etc) while the latter aren’t. And why should they be? This kind of language is a hangover from when weblogs were written largely by and for web geeks. And that’s fine — this is a new and fast-changing environment where the technical underpinnings of website construction always lies just beneath the surface. But at the same time sites like Pepys’ Diary, that cover non-technical matters, must be aware that such words often mean nothing to new readers and should explain such concepts in terms normal people can understand. Otherwise it is impossible for a reader to tell whether to ignore an “RSS feed” or learn how to use it. So, here’s my brief guide to weblog terms for readers, not webloggers…