How to Create Your Own Blog

Have something to say? Want to share your thoughts, opinions, and ideas with your friends, family, or people around the globe? Why not create your own blog? The site I use, Blogger, makes it simple and foolproof to create a unique-looking, personalized blog. Write in it every day, or every week. If your blog becomes popular, you can even have ads put on it and earn some money! Since I use Blogger, I'll walk you through the easy steps on that site.

You will first need to go to www.google.com/mail and create a Google account. Then go to www.blogger.com and click "create a blog." That will direct you to a form you will fill out, which includes the name of your blog and the internet address you want for it. It will check to see whether that address is available. After you fill out one of those word verification boxes to make sure you're a human, you can begin to create! You will start by choosing one of their templates. You will need to decide how many columns, don't worry about the colors just yet, you can choose text and background colors later. Blogger only offers a dozen templates; choose one now and you can change it later, as I did. There are plenty of sites with free blog templates on them; simply Google "blog templates." It will be easier to switch templates if they are both the same number of columns, so keep that in mind when choosing your Blogger template.

Once you've chosen your template and hit the "continue" button, it takes you directly to the page where you can write your first post! If you want to go ahead and do that, feel free to do so. I, however, customized and personalized my blog before creating my first post. Use the "Settings" tab on this page to write a description of your blog, which will appear under its name on the title page. Under settings, you can also decide whether to let your friends e-mail your posts to their friends, whether there will be adult content, etc. The "Layout" tab is where you can really get creative! Choose "page elements" to add followers, archives, and "gadgets." Gadgets are the coolest thing you can add to your blog page. You can upload pictures onto a Flickr or Picassa page, and have a slideshow of your pictures run on the blog page. You can add links to anything that has a web address! You can add a calendar, a poll, a profile of yourself, a picture, a newsreel of current headlines, to name just a few.

Can't find what you're looking for in a Gadget? With the Gadget window open, enter a search for what you're looking for. There are lots of folks out there who don't work for Blogger, but create Gadgets to be used with it. And don't worry, if you change your mind, Gadgets can be deleted or moved around to almost anywhere on the page. The best way to customize your blog is with fonts and color. This is also located under the "Layout" tab. You can choose the fonts for your post titles, posts, and comments. Choose the colors for these fonts, and the backgrounds, for a personalized look. Now that you have your page set up to your liking, you can begin to post. Posts are in standard HTML, you can underline, use bold or italics as you like. As with any document, you'll want to save your work occasionally; there is an "auto-save" feature, but it has sometimes failed on me, so I hit "save" every couple of sentences.

I also recommend that you proofread twice, both before and after you post. For some reason, Blogger's spell-checker is not very good, so I don't rely on it at all. You can edit the post after it is published by clicking the "pencil" symbol at the bottom of the post. Did you start a post, but don't feel like finishing it just now? Just save it as a draft, and go back to it later. There is a help page, which you may need when you're first getting started.

There are three ways to get help: 1) use the help topics, including known issues; 2) e-mail the help desk if you can't find the answer in help topics; 3) ask other Blogger users with more experience - I've gotten good answers from folks who know Blogger inside and out. Now you're ready to blog! It has been a very rewarding experience for me; I blog about my neighborhood, and was not getting very many comments, so I just kinda figured that I didn't have many readers. Then, I started getting e-mails thanking me for the blog (and complaining when I let too much time go by without a post!). I even ran into a neighbor at the post office who told me how much she enjoyed my blog! Everyone's got something interesting to say - now go ahead and publish it!