Book review: Technical blogging; second edition

Technical blogging, second edition by Antonio Cangiano is–as the title implies–a book about blogging for the technically inclined. It guides the reader from the initial steps of setting up and writing a blog all the way to discussing the necessary advanced topics should your blog become very popular. The second edition adds new content and brings up to date the topics which have changed over the five years since the first edition was published.

I was lucky enough to read some of the early revisions of this book and it impressed me straight away. Antonio has a refreshingly relaxed writing style which made the book very pleasant to read. The breadth and depth of advice available in this book reflects Antonio’s many years of blogging experience.

The book is clearly written and flows well from one topic to the next, guiding the reader from the basics of blogging, to planning, time management, SEO, promotion, site usage analytics, and how to use one’s influence in a positive manner.

It’s full of practical tips, tricks and tools that one can use to create and maintain a blog; the footnotes and links to relevant sites contain many nuggets of information useful in all aspects of technical blogging. For instance, through Antonio’s book I was introduced to services like Buffer and time management tools like TaskWarrior (handy tools at home and at work) as well as interesting and thought provoking blogs such as Seth Godin’s blog. Not only is there a wealth of information online that one can tap into to learn from but it’s also possible to contribute to this body of knowledge by writing one’s own blog. Technical blogging provides all the help and guidelines you need (and more!) to put you on the path to creating a successful blog.

After having tried blogging a couple of times and not been very successful at regularly posting, this book gave me the nudge I needed to try again as well as the supporting advice to blog more consistently; but more than that: it gave me the feeling that “Yeah! I can do this!” and provided me with a positive impetus to restarting my own blog.

Although the main focus of the book is on technical blogging (and the technical issues surrounding blogging), many of the topics addressed in the book are also applicable to blogging on non-technical topics. Therefore, even people who consider themselves not to be “techies” can glean a lot of useful information which can be applied in their own blogging activities.

I highly recommend this book, especially if you’re starting out or trying to “reboot” your blogging activities.