Duncan Riley> People get into blogging for two reasons, and two reasons only. The first one is on a whim, they’ve heard others are doing it, and they think they might give it a go, and maybe some friends and family will read it, and are content with some basic writing. The second reason is fame and fortune, although I’d qualify this is noting that fame doesn’t have to be huge and neither does the fortune: these are the bloggers who blog with a purpose, on a topic, and to reach more than their immediate friends, they’re also commonly referred to as number chasers. I’ll admit, I’m a number chaser, when I started writing The Blog Herald I did so because I saw a niche and it was a topic that interested me greatly. I wanted to write and have as many people as possible see it. If you’re in my boat you’ve got great expectations, that’s a good thing, because you should always aim high; but there are a few things you should consider if you want to make a reasonable go of blogging.
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Despite obvious protests to the contrary by many die hard Mac Users who may read the Blog Herald, the majority of PC’s in this world, and the majority of bloggers still use Windows. Whether that’s right or wrong I’ll leave for another day, and whilst I’m a Mac fan, this blog is still written on a PC.

However, in writing a blog, as a blogger you should always remember that different people use different operating systems and browsers. In the early days I know that The Blog Herald presented terribly outside of the world of Internet Explorer, back in the days that nearly everyone used IE and you never really gave a second though about the competition, mainly because there was a general lack of credible competition. Times have changed, Firefox makes up half of the browsers used to view this site (and it’s my browser of choice as well) and the Blog Herald is presented using CSS in an attempt to assure that users on all browsers and operating systems get to see the good stuff. Aside from the fact that this site doesn’t render quite properly on Internet Explorer now (it sometimes runs off the right hand side, but its still readable: I’ve tried fixing it but my hair continues to turn grey as a consequence, one day…) it’s important to consider that potentially millions of future readers don’t user Windows, and that your site might not present well to them.
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There are a lot of great blogging packages out there that do a fine job with blogs, but unless your an expert, blogging is about the extent of what many can do.

Content Management Systems (CMS) have been around since the early days of the web as a means in which to manage content on a website. Strictly speaking blogware such as WordPress or MovableType are CMS packages, however are more targeted in what they aim to achieve, ie: they are primarily set up for blogging, whereas general CMS packages do a lot more than just blogging.
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Attention Slashdot Readers: the latest Blog Herald Blog Count is available here (July) for those interested.

Duncan Riley> Time for another count which I was saving for a few weeks, but after A list blogger Steve Rubel, who should have known better, asked whether the latest Japanese blogging figures were reflected in the 11 million in Blogpulse, and also said that somebody should provide a country break down on the number of blogs (which I’ve been doing nearly month since January) here we go.

The good news in this report is that we have some better numbers to go by coming out of Asia, although the breakdown in the Anglosphere is still based on operator numbers and not by country
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Duncan Riley> There comes a time in everyones life that outside events or things gone wrong, sometimes as a result of our own actions, sometimes without control. And when such events occur blogging is often the first to suffer. Some events mean that you cant blog, others mean that your time is occupied, for what ever reason elsewhere. No matter what the circumstances, there is still some good advice that can apply to most situations.

Get back on the horse
They say when you fall off a horse the best course of action is to hop back on. I know as a child that the same was applied to learning to ride a bike. In the past week I had to deal with a local tornado and bad power for the better part of 48 hours. It hurt, it hurt stats and it hurt me personally because I had no means of delivering, so on this point I can speak from a little bit of experience. No matter how long the delay, the time off, or the time away (which ever way you describe it) the most important thing is to resume blogging as soon as possible. Remember that although there may have disappointed regular readers, every day potentially thousands of visitors may discover your blog from your older posts. They are not going to know your history or pattern of blogging. What they will discover is whether you are blogging at the moment. Your regular readers wont abandon you over a couple of days of not blogging, nor I’d argue probably up to a week. Any thing longer could result in a loss, but even if it is longer than a week, the same rule still applies: Get back on the horse: start blogging again as soon as possible.

Disclosure
One of the wonderful things about the blogosphere is that generally speaking, honesty is the norm. If something has happened to exclude you from blogging, tell your readers. For example, many regular readers of the Blog Herald will know that as a rule I dont blog a lot on weekends, so it’s not a problem for me. I disappeared Monday (my time) due to the Tornado, but I came straight out and said so. It may be an old adage, but honesty still remains the best policy, and as with everything in the blogosphere, people will respect you, and understand you, if you are honest.