Unix tips: Become a better blogger with Unix

Introduction: Do you know that blogging works in conjunction with UNIX (R)? UNIX's built-in Web and text processing tools enable you to create blogs quickly and easily. Explore some handy tips for improving the creative skills of UNIX blogs.

UNIX® has a lot in common with web blogs or blogs. In addition to being the native environment for most Web servers and the preferred environment for many web developers, UNIX is the ideal environment for creating blogs because of its powerful web and text processing capabilities. Take advantage of the command-line tools and features inherent in UNIX to make you a better blog owner. Here are some tips to help you achieve that.

Keep providing fresh content

The most important rule of blogging is to do as much as possible. The general idea is that your blog should be more like a scrolling ticker note, or even more like a TV-screen movement, than some pieces of etching that were pulled out of an archaeological well. It should always be growing, and readers should get a sense of freshness when they visit. As far as the media in the Web site is concerned, how many visitors are actively reading them, and how many visitors are watching them--access to links, reloading and return. To be successful on such a site, you have to adapt to this.

Although you don't need to install any special software for this, the quickest and most important way to improve your blog is to keep adding new content! Even if you only open the blog today, as long as you insist on updating it several times a day, rather than a year, only on a whim to update it, then the weekend will have more people read it.

This technique is related to all the other techniques behind this article, because they will show you how UNIX systems can help provide fresh blog content faster and better than ever before. You must know what your content is most popular, who you know is reading it and where they come from, make your text load faster and better, and automate your blog updates. Here's a quick introduction to some UNIX based content management solutions that may be better than the solutions you've been using to make blogs.

View Log

The log is the source of your energy. They will tell you who is viewing your blog and information about location, times, and frequency. If you are actively publishing your blog, you should check the log at least once a day. Logs enable you to see who is reading your publication, knowing exactly what they are reading and when they are reading it. So, why ignore it?

You can use command-line tools to extract meaningful data from logs, but there are special UNIX tools that automate the analysis of the most popular forms of logging, including the logs written by the Apache Web server. One such tool is the popular open source code analog command.

Respond to popular content

Use the analog command to check your links and see what people are accessing. First, get a general report showing statistics-how many unique requests are being issued, whether there are any failed requests, how many different hosts are being serviced, and so on:

$ analog-a www.20060901 | Lynx-stdin