wayne on July 8, 2008
I had an epiphany! Yes, an epiphany, and I want to share it with you. What if I was able to provide help to thousands of blogger's, both beginning and experienced? I believe I can, and I believe that I will. If you are using the Blogger.com platform for your blog, I will be focusing my blog here at WayneJohn.com towards helping those using that platform. Read on to learn more about my plans.
Update: Note to new visitors! If you would like to know more about this series or view all available lessons, just follow the appropriate link.
The Problems I've Had Helping Others
I've had some issues helping some existing friends that are using the Blogger.com due to my environment being completely different than theirs. Being that I can write web software allows me a bit of flexibility in terms of options I have to create my blog. For instance, this blog you are reading is using an open-source blogging package called BlogEngine.net written by Mads Kristensen. It's free to download and there are instructions for setting it up. However, if you are not familiar with some web development concepts, you may have many more questions and problems using it than you would a free blog service like Blogger.com.
While most of the people I have met through blogging are using Blogger.com, the differences between my blogging platform and those of my blogging friends puts me at a disadvantage to provide a deeper level of assistance and help. So to correct that, I've created another blog located on the Blogger platform called Views on Life located at http://wayneonblogger.blogspot.com/. Please note, this new blog is an experimental blog that I will try to groom into something worthwhile and satisfying.
The Views on Life Blog
It is on this new blog that I will do what other people are trying to do. By doing this, I will have to go through the steps that blogger's using the Blogger.com platform will need to do to achieve what they want to achieve. Thus, I should be able to provide a deeper level of help to those that want it. I hope you agree that this will be the way to help you and others as well. I'm always open for any ideas around this as well.
I intend on touching on the following topics as I grow my new blog. I might formalize this even further as time goes on and I begin to see how others are responding to what I'm providing. But for an initial syllabus as it were, I'm thinking these topics will provide the framework with which I will write within.
- Blog creation and definition
- Modification to suit personal taste
- Blog promotion
- Optimizing the blog for search engines and extending your blogs reach with feeds
- Saving yourself time maintaining the blog and creating posts
- Making money with your blog
- Enhancing your blog with widgets and gadgets
This is a tall order, but I'm up for the challenge as I know it will provide value to others. It may take some time for me to reach the point that would help some blogger's. In some cases, I will take time to help those individuals one-on-one. For the most part however, my blog posts here on WayneJohn.com will guide you through all the steps it takes to create a blog for yourself, modify it to suit your tastes, and make it an enjoyable experience for you and your readers.
Need Help Now?
If there are certain things that you would like to know right now, please use my contact form to send me an email about it. Let me know what it is you are trying to accomplish, and I will see how I can best fit that into the blog posts that are forthcoming. If what you need isn't coming for a while, I might be inclined to work with you one-on-one to help you out.
Either way I'm putting myself out there to provide help to those using the Blogger.com platform, and I'm quite excited to be able to provide value to others in this manner.
Next Steps, Homework???
For now, please take note of the blog we'll use as an example for all the posts I will be writing. I'll also be referring to it with each post, but please tell your other Blogger.com friends that you feel might benefit from these posts, ask them to subscribe to my blog either by email or by obtaining the feed for a reader if they are interested.
I'm looking forward to helping everyone out and I hope you are as excited as I am about this. While I may not know everything, there are those out there that do. I have been in contact with several professional blogger's that have also shown an interest in providing help to other blogger's. I'll be bringing them in to help out where they are experts in their field.
My next post will cover the initial blog creation and definition. I'm trying not to jump around too much preferring instead to create a long series of posts that one might follow from the first steps of blog creation to defining an end game for your blog. You can always find all the posts I'll be writing in this series by looking at my archive and choosing the Blogger.com Step by Step category of posts.
See you next post, and don't worry, I'll still be posting the some of the same classless banter from time to time that some of you have come to know and love. :) Cheers!
