Blog

Blogs, or web logs, are online journals based on the World Wide Web which are used for a wide variety of purposes, including recording personal thoughts and experiences in the style of a diary, sharing information about news and activities, presenting longer-form articles as in a regular newspaper column, or sharing links to interesting content found elsewhere. Like a typical journal or diary, blogs are composed of entries, or posts, which are organized chronologically, generally with newer posts shown first. Many blogs also enable discussion by allowing visitors to leave comments on individual posts. The act of writing or producing a blog is known as blogging, and the collection of all blogs is known as the blogosphere. From humble beginnings in the early 1990s, blogging became ubiquitous by the mid-2000s, with one count finding 19.6 million blogs in October 2005 and one new blog being created every second.

Various platforms provide facilities for blogging, including WordPress, Blogspot, Medium and Substack. WordPress also exists as a software package which can be installed independently on an existing self-hosted website at no cost. Other packages which support blogging include content management systems such as Joomla and Drupal, and static site generators such as Hugo and Jekyll.

Seeing the potential to share Bahá’í perspectives online, individual Bahá’ís began to embrace blogging by the mid-2000s. A 2006 survey found 350 blogs produced by Bahá’ís, 75% of which were active, posting at least once every two months. Youth were seen as making especially notable contributions, blogging about topics such as years of service, experiences with Bahá’í community life (including Nineteen Day Feasts, study circles, and children's classes) and about the Bahá’í Faith its teachings. Bahá’ís reported a variety of motivations for blogging, including the desire to share their beliefs and opinions with the world; to provide reliable information about the Bahá’í Faith online; to inform fellow Bahá’ís about coming community events; to share photos and videos of community events; and to keep in touch with friends and family around the world.

Certain initiatives, such as bahainine.com, sought to highlight content posted on Bahá’í blogs, while also allowing visitors to search a list of Bahá’í blogs for certain topics and keywords. Blog Action Day, an annual initiative by Australian Bahá’ís Collis and Cyan Ta'eed initiated in 2007, allowed blog owners to co-ordinate their efforts to engage in discourse on pressing social issues, with participants uniting to focus on a single issue each year. The inaugural Blog Action Day focused on the theme of the environment, drawing support from over 20,000 blogs.