wayne on July 9, 2008
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Welcome to the First Lesson
Greetings and welcome to the first of many posts that will help you use the Blogger.com blogging platform for your blog. I assume you are here because you are interested in starting a blog. If you don't know what blogging is, I recommend that you read my page 'What is a blog' before getting started.
Blogging is fun, and to some, highly addictive. There are hundreds, if not thousands of blogs started each day, but about only 1% of those new blogs will be around in 6 months. So to help you get the most out of your blogging experience, I've decided to create a lengthy series of posts that will walk you through all the nuances of blogging with the Blogger.com blog platform. I will also cover related disciplines as they relate to blogging to provide a well rounded set of posts that you can come back to at any time.
Without further ado, let's get going!
Creating your Account
To use the Blogger platform, you will need to create an account with Blogger.com. To do so, you will need to visit the following URL.
Create your Blogger.com Account: https://www.blogger.com/start
Once you are on Blogger.com, you can begin creating your account and your blog by clicking the orange arrow as shown in the graphic here.
As you can see, during the account creation process we will do three things. Create an account, Name our blog and choose a template for the blog.
Templates? A template defines the look of your site, the structure and the colors that comprise the site itself. It is the skeleton and the skin that you give your blog (web site).
All of these elements you are about the define can be changed later on, except for the login name you create on the 'Create and Account' and the URL you define on the 'Name your Blog' page. These items cannot be changed once you create your account and create the blog.
Once you click the orange arrow, you will begin stepping through several screens. The first one we encounter is the Create a Google Account screen. Go ahead and click 'Create your blog now'.
On the new screen that displays, you will supply an email address, password and a display name.
NOTE! The display name you provide will be displayed for all the world to see. If you don't want the world to know your name, enter something other than your name.
ALSO NOTE! If you already have a Google account, you can also choose to sign in and use your existing Google account.
Once you are satisfied with everything on this screen, click the orange continue button near the bottom of the page. you will be taken to the Name your blog page.
Naming Your Blog
There are many opinions on how you might name your blog, I'm not going to go into that here. What I will say however is that you should give your blog a name that:
- Is meaningful to you and/or meaningful to others
- Relates to the topic you will be writing about
- Shows your personality
- Contains keywords that you are trying to rank high on search engines
You can always change your title, but you should try to figure out a good one for your blog and stick with it. While you can change it at any time, I recommend trying to find one early in the life of your blog and stick with it. The reason I say this is that your title will become your 'brand'. You don't see the Pepsi-Cola Corporation changing the name of their soft drinks at all. Pepsi has been Pepsi since it was created. There may be off-shoots like diet and other flavors, but when you say 'gimme a Pepsi', people know what you mean, and what you want. The same is true for the title of your blog to some extent, so try to find something you like and will be able to live with.
More important though is the URL you give your blog. By default, the URL you give to blogger will be appended with .blogspot.com. Your URL should contain some descriptive words that describe what the blog is about to some extent.
Example: Your blog is going to be a poetry blog where you will spill your heart and soul into the poetry you write and provide to the Internet. While there are many poetry blogs already on the Internet, you will be hard pressed to find a URL that is not already taken with the word 'poem' or 'poetry' on the blogger.com platform. Having to create a URL that makes it unique can be difficult since most of the 'good' names are already taken most likely.
Try adding your name to the URL to make it WaynesPoetry.blogspot.com. You will need to play around with this a bit before you find one you are happy with. Play with variations of the names you wanted until you find something satisfactory for you.
There is a 'Check Availability' link that you can use to check to see if your desired URL is available. You can also use a BlogSpot URL Checker tool as well to help facilitate this sometimes time consuming and frustrating part of establishing your blog on Blogger.com.
For the sample Views on Life blog, I have specified a title of 'Views On Life', and out of pure frustration by not finding a URL I like, I decided to keep the URL simple with http://wayneonblogger.blogspot.com. I would only choose this if this was a purely personal blog as it refers directly to me being on Blogger.com.
Once you have found a good title and a URL that you are happy with and that is not already taken, click the orange continue button.
NOTE! There are ways that you can apply your own www domain name to your blog, but it is way to early to get into that just yet. That will be discussed in a future post. You can always change that later, and that's what I'll do eventually. There will be consequences to changing things later, but for now, we are dealing with a new blog with no audience yet, so we are fine.
Choosing a Template
The template you choose is a personal decision at best. At the time of this writing there are 12 different templates to choose from in the stock Blogger.com templates. You can also find other templates on the Internet for free and for sale. I will not direct you to any of them due to the supportability of them. Not all are well built, and you might experience problems with them. My advice is to stick to one of the templates provided by Blogger for now. I'll eventually discuss custom templates and cover them in a later post.
For the Views on Life blog, I have chosen the Sand Dollar template created by Jason Sutter. I felt it was the closest match to my primary blog WayneJohn.com.
Select a template, and click the orange continue button at the bottom.
Congratulations!
You have just created your blog! Wasn't that hard was it? You can write your first post by clicking the orange 'Start Blogging' button at the bottom of the page.
For now, simply enter a dummy post. Give your blog some jibber-jabber to fill the empty spaces a little bit. Once you are satisfied with your jibber-jabber, click the orange 'Publish Post' button near the bottom of the editor.
Wrapping it all up
At this point you have created a blog. You gave it a title, defined the URL that users will use to reach your blog, chose a template that gave your blog a 'look' with colors and organized the different elements for you. 
Give yourself a pat on the back! You have taken your first steps towards a rewarding and fulfilling experience that is blogging.
Here is what the Views on Life blog looks like so far. As you can see we have a single post so far. This is simply a filler post that will provide some content for us while we continue to modify our blog to suit our needs and wants in the following posts.
If you are following along, the only difference you should see is that I have defined some properties of my user profile. That is why my avatar kitty is showing along with a little blurb about me. And yes, the amount of text I wrote for my first post doesn't qualify as jibber-jabber...I actually took some time with it. :)
Note from Wayne
In our next post, I will detail the various elements of the blog to ensure we are all speaking the same language when we refer to the blog.
Please leave me a comment if there are any questions on this topic. I will respond as best I can, and I may even modify the original post to include any information that is missing that you , the reader, brings up. As long as it is pertinent to the topic, why not right?
Further Reading
The Importance of Title and URL
Good, Bad, and Ugly things to name your blog
Domain Names - Choose the right one for your blog
Give Some Feedback on this Lesson
Did you create a blog by going through this lesson? Let everyone know about your new blog by leaving a comment below. A major part of blogging is communicating with others. Why not take that first step and let me know what you thought of this lesson, and what Title and URL you chose to use for your new blog? Show off your handiwork!
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PS: I didn't want to split this up into several posts. There are plenty of people that will outright skip this one, and I didn't want to bore every one on the first post and spread the initial blog creation over several days. If you ever want me to go into more detail on any of the items in a lesson, just leave a comment! You know the drill. :)
