Nora’s Computer Club: Setting Up a Blog

By
Nora Young
– January 8, 2010Posted in: Nora's Computer Club
school

Hi, and welcome to Computer Club!

Here’s a step-by-step overview of how to set up a blog. The first thing you need is some blogging software. This is available for free online, and it’s basically the platform that will let you write your blog, kind of like going out and buying a paper diary before you can start your journal. Popular, free, blogging software includes WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, or Typepad. Blogger, which is owned by Google, probably has the clearest instructions, and is simplest to use; WordPress is probably the most sophisticated.

Once you pick your blogging software, you’ll need to create an account. For this, you should just follow the instructions at the website you choose. They should be pretty straightforward; there’s usually something to click on that says “Sign Up” or “Create a Blog”. You’ll be asked to give your email address, pick a password, and pick a username. This is the name that will appear on each of your posts, so only use your real name if you are comfortable doing that. You can always change these preferences down the road. In general, you’ll be prompted to pick a “template”, which just means the basic look of the blog. As I said on the radio/podcast, you can make your blog public or private. I’d recommend making it private at first, so you can play around, customize your blog, and get comfortable with it, before you’re ready for the big ‘reveal’.

You can start blogging as soon as you’ve got your account set up. There are, though, some things you likely want to do to customize your blog. For more tips, continue reading.

Take a look at the screen captures below. This is what you’ll see when you are ready to write a blog post at WordPress:

And this is what you’ll see if you’re using Blogger:

You may just want to write text and then click on the button that says Publish. Boom, you’re done. That said, you may want to create links, so that you can refer to other websites. For instance, if you wanted to link to the Spark blog, all you do is highlight the word Spark with your mouse, click on the ‘link’ button (it will either be labeled ‘link’ or have the image of a little chain link). It will prompt you to enter the web address, say, http://www.cbc.ca/spark. Fill that info in, and you will have created a Spark link. Similarly, if you want to add an image, just click on the ‘image’ button and follow the prompts.

You should probably also fill in ‘tags’, which you can see on the right hand side of the WordPress screen. These are just words that identify the topic of each post, and they help people (and search engines) find the content they’re looking for.

You will likely want to explore the ways you can customize your blog. Typically, this means clicking on links like ‘layout’ or ‘settings’ that shape things like whether and how people can comment. This is one reason why you might want to keep your blog private at first, until you figure out what settings you’re comfortable with. That said, you can always change the settings down the road.

Finally, you should fill out your profile, so people who read your blog can learn a bit more about you. Don’t write anything here that you are not comfortable making public. (For instance, writing your birth date leaves you open to a threat of identity theft). Remember that there are ‘spiders’ that troll the Web looking for email addresses, so either don’t list your email address, or list it in a way that’s difficult for spiders to find, like this: nora [dot] young [at] cbc [dot] ca.

Over time, you will likely get spam in your comments section. To cut down on this problem, you can do things like choose to close comments a period of weeks after you write the post.

There are lots of other tips, more than I can list here. A good place to look for effective blogging tips is this series that blogger Merlin Mann did for Spark. He explains blogging etiquette, how to attract traffic to your blog, and more. There are also plenty of other resources online which will walk you through exactly how to customize your blog.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

[Original Image by atomicjeep]

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