Blogging Tools: What language are you using?

The days of hand coding HTML and frames to create web pages are long gone, thanks in large part to the development of cutting edge blogging platforms (WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, Moveable Type).  Fortunately, the languages have evolved to allow for more detailed results while building upon the original foundations of HTML. 

While most blogging platforms automatically convert your posts into the language. a few tweaks can be made if you understand the language.  Both Wordpres.com and Typepad allow users to customize their page’s CSS for a fee.  In case you completely missed the language expansion, here’s a quick reference with definitions and quick start guides.

• XML stands for Extensible Markup Language.  XML differs from XHTML, HTML or CSS because it does not carry any information on how to display the data, therefore it must be combined with the CSS language. 
• HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language.  HTML is the structure of text information within a document.  It also includes scripting, appearance and semantics of the document or web page.
• XHTML stands for Extensible Hypertext Markup Language.   It is often described as the intersection of HTML and XML. 
• CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets.  CSS uses HTML and XHTML to communicate with a page as to how it is to be displayed.  CSS can be used to define fonts, sizes, colors, layout, proportion, etc. Using CSS makes your site infinitely more customizable.

The truth is, unless you are heavy into coding and site building, you probably don’t need to know more than a simple definition of each language.  If you’re looking to customize your site, look into the language your platform uses.  From there, you should be able to modify settings like column width, font type, font size, and background color.  Learning a language isn’t for the faint of heart, but having a unique, custom site is worth it!