Second, you can of course launch your blog yourself as part of your existing web site. One perfectly valid approach is to simply create an HTML page by hand with each blog entry, as in the following example:

Bob's Blog

Punters Escape Puntersville Prison

Exploding Golf Balls Cruel to Groundhogs

While this produces a perfectly acceptable blog, and it isn't terribly difficult to add new entries at the top and remove old entries from the bottom, there are reasons to use more advanced tools. First, you will probably want prettier formatting; copy and paste can save some time there, but it is still awkward to change the formatting later. Even server side include directives involve some repeated effort. Second, you may wish to offer your blog entries for syndication by creating an RSS feed. It is possible to maintain both an RSS feed and a web page by hand, but why go to so much trouble when there are simple, free, open-source tools to do it for you?

blosxom is a remarkably simple yet powerful tool for creating blogs automatically. Just write a text file for each blog entry, with the title on the first line and the content on the remaining lines, and toss those files in the blosxom "entries" folder. blosxom does the rest. If you don't like the layout, you can change it in a single place instead of editing every entry. And blosxom automatically generates an RSS feed as well. blosxom is compatible with any web hosting account that allows the use of Perl CGI programs; a Unix shell account is particularly handy but not mandatory.

blosxom is far from the only useful blogging tool available. Perhaps the most powerful option is Movable Type, highly sophisticated but still free to individuals and nonprofit organizations.