Getting Started With Blog

Blogger is Google’s free tool for creating blogs. It can be found on the web at http://www.blogger.com.

Blogs, short for web-logs, are a form of online journal.

Getting Started With Blogger

You can use blogs for everything from updating your friends and family about your life, giving your own advice column, discussing your political views, or relating your experience in a topic of interest. You can host blogs with multiple contributors, or you can run your own solo show. You can even use Blogger to make your own podcast feeds. Although there are fancier blog tools out there, the mixture of cost (free) and flexibility makes Blogger one of the best deals around.

Setting Up Your Blog

Setting up a Blogger account takes three easy steps. Create an account, name your blog, and choose a template. You can host multiple blogs with the same account name, so you only need to do that part once. This way you could separate your professional blog about your business from your personal blog about dogs, for instance.

Hosting Your Blog

Screen Capture by Marziah Karch

Blogger will host your blog for free on blogspot.com. You can also use Blogger to automatically ftp your blog posts to your own web space. Make sure you have the correct server settings from your internet service provider, otherwise you may have unpredictable results.

Posting

Once your blog is set up, Blogger has a basic WYSIWYG editor. (What you see is what you get) This is not necessarily a bad thing. Most blogging tools do not have robust html editors, and the ones that do often require java or other plug-ins. If you need more formatting options and a larger window, you can use Google Docs to post to your Blogger blog. You could also do advanced editing with HTML. Blogger has an HTML tab to let you do this directly, although it does not allow JavaScript.

Email Your Posts

You can optionally configure Blogger with a secret email address, so you can email your posts to your blog. This is handy for making updates on the fly or updating from your cell phone or other mobile device.

Pictures

Blogger will let you upload pictures from your desktop and post them to your blog. You can choose the basic layout and size of your images, and they’ll be uploaded to Bloggers’s server space, so you don’t have to host the pictures on a different website. That doesn't mean you can't post with pictures that you've hosted elsewhere on the Web. You can also use Picasa Web Albums to post pictures to your blog.
Google Video and YouTube videos can similarly be directly linked into your blog posts.

Templates

You initially pick one of several templates for Blogger. You can switch to a new template at any point. The template controls the look and feel of your blog, as well as the links on the side. You can also customize and create your own template, although this requires more advanced knowledge of CSS and web design. There are many sites and individuals who also offer Blogger templates free for personal use.
You can change the arrangement of most of the elements within a template by dragging and dropping. Adding new page elements is easy, and Google gives you a good selection, such as link lists, titles, banners, and even AdSense ads.

Posted in: Getting started