Last week we put our blog feature out into the wild in public beta for everyone to try out and see what they thought of it. The feedback to date has been great and we're really glad that you all like it! The blog platform is waiting for you all to give it a try.

To help you get started we have 9 new beautiful blog specific templates for you to choose from. Alternatively you can use a standard template and tailor this to meet your own blogging needs.

Blog Templates First 9

We've had a few questions about what a blog actually is and how it might be useful to your business so here goes!

Blogging has been around since 1997 (in it's long form name weblog, shortened to blog around 1999). Since then people have been building these types of sites and as of 16 February 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence. Today the lines are very much blurred between what a blog is and what a website is. Traditionally a website was something were you update individual pages with content in the form of text, images, audio and video. There was no concept of when it was published and you couldn't easily syndicate it to other sites.

In comparison to a website, blogging provides a way to structure your content as 'posts' in reverse chronological order, with the most recent post available at the top of the page. Posts can be tagged to be able to find relevant content first and is published through a standard called RSS (the orange icons that you see on the internet). This in turn can be used to re-publish your content to other services automatically, such as TwitterFeed.com for publishing blog content to Twitter. Something that is fast becoming the norm with blogging is the ability to share your posts through Facebook and Twitter using the Like and Tweet buttons. Most blog platforms provide this as an extra that you have to add in yourself - we've taken all the pain away and it's there by default.

You can use a blog in various ways depending on whether you are blogging as a business or blogging for pleasure. If you are a business looking to use the Moonfruit blogging feature then you may choose to use it for letting people know about your latest products, Maybe provide news or information around what your company is up to at the moment, providing your customers with an insight into the inner workings of your business. Your blog isn't just about publishing either. When you publish a post you can enable comments and then have conversations with potential customers creating a community.

As an individual you can use your blog to share your passions, interests and insights. It is a place to share and learn from others. The world is your oyster and now is the time to give it a try!