So You Wanna Publish A Blog

Excellent! It’s not that scary, really. Time-consuming? Sometimes. Possibly addictive leading to obsession? Yes. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s learn how to publish that blog.

1. Find a blog program to ‘host’ your blog
Hosting means that someone is keeping the power on. To go with a blogging program means that someone is giving you tools to create and manage your blog. This should be free. I use blogspot.com. It started out as Blogger, and Google bought it. I have a friend who works there, and he’s a great and efficient guy. He loves the environment, and so do I. So, go to blogspot.com and sign up for an account (although, you're kind of already here, since I'm at blogspot.com...just look up in my URL in the address bar).

2. Create your account
Your Username appears when you comment, no matter how many blogs you have under that account. For example: my username is BloggerMouse. My blogs are “FashionMista” and the one you’re on now. When I comment anywhere in the blogging world (well, blogs that are under blogspot), my name will appear as BloggerMouse. This is changeable anytime.

3. Pick your template
Blogger will present you with a list of templates to choose from. This is the design, or visual layout, of your blog. You can design your own template, but that’s advanced. For more information on it, though, go to the bloggerforum to see what other people say about designing their own templates. Otherwise, the ones Blogger provides are just fine. You can change this at any time as well once you get started, and will actually be presented with more choices. Note: if you’ve done anything customizable to your template, those changes will be lost when you change templates.

4. Go ahead, post something
Christen your blog with your first post. Go to Create Post and write anything you want. If you’re using Windows or on a Mac using Firefox or maybe Mozilla (just not Safari), you have access to a ‘wysiwig’ editor. This stands for ‘what you see is what you get’ and it makes formatting the copy in your blog much easier. You’ll see buttons for Bold, Italic and to make a link. Use them. They work just like if you were formatting text in Word. Just highlight your text and press the formatting button of choice.

Enjoy!