Surfers are increasingly making their mark on the online world thanks to simple software and a bit of hard work.

Web logging, also known as blogging, has survived the dotcom bust by striking a cord with individuals wanting to contribute to, not just consume, web resources.

The trend began to take-off about the same time as peer-to-peer file sharing, made famous by Napster's music sharing scheme. While file sharing has been dealt a near fatal blow by lawyer's stamping down on free-for-all exchanges of proprietary material, blogging's home-grown appeal has helped it grow.

Blogging has exploded from a geeky activity into a cottage industry churning out information on a wide range of subjects.

In 1998 there were about 30,000 web logs but now there are about 500,000, according to blogdex, which tracks logs. Even celebrities such as Moby, William Shatner, Melanie Griffiths and Jeff Bridges have got into the action.

A web log, or blog, is generally a regularly updated list of commentary and links to interesting material on the web. Many blogs are personal, what's-on-my-mind type musings.

Others are collaborations around specific topics.

Web logs can range from political analysis to celebrity gossip and from personal rants to more thoughtful critiques.

The content can also vary greatly, providing not just links and commentary but diaries, photographs, poetry, mini-essays and even fiction.

A good web log is updated often, in a kind of real-time improvisation, with pointers to interesting events, pages, stories and happenings elsewhere on the web.

It has taken off thanks to the development of easy-to-use online tools, such as Blogger and UserLand, which make it simple and cheap to update personal web pages instantly. Tools on sites such as Blogger, Pitas, Groksoup and Editthispage have attracted huge numbers of participants even though none of these services were available six months ago.

Prya, which publishes Blogger, a web-based editing tool, has registered 3,000 users since its launch late last year. The company said subscriptions were growing at a rate of 30 per cent a month. Userland Software signed-up 2,700 users for Manila, its browser-based publishing tool, in the first two months of its release.

The Blogger site, for example, provides a way to automate the blog publishing process without writing any code or having to worry about installing any sort of server software or scripts.

You make posts to your blog by submitting a simple form on the Blogger site and the results immediately show up on your site with your design.

If you have a site you want to use Blogger to publish to, you need file transfer protocol (FTP) access. If you don't have a site, Blogger can create one for you.

You can provide it with a page template or use a pre-designed one. When you want to publish something you enter it on a form. When you're ready, you hit a publish button that sends the new page to your web server.

Other tools worth considering include letting readers comment, usually through a link at the foot of each blog entry, which leads to a discussion. The Enetation site provides a tool to do this.

It is also possible to add a search box, such as Google's, to encourage more people to look around and generate more visits, while a news feed, like the one provided by the Moreover site, helps to make sure your page is always up-to-date.

If you've got something to say and are looking to say it to as many people as possible, blogging, not bragging, could be the best way to do it.

It's relatively easy to do, regardless of your technical abilities, and is a great way to spend time online.

blogdex.media.mit.edu
moby.com
williamshatner.com
melaniegriffith.com
www.jeffbridges.com
www.blogger.com
www.pitas.com
www.groksoup.com
www.manilasites.com
www.enetation.co.uk
www.moreover.com