Blogging 101 - Welcome

Hi, and welcome. Blogging 101 is a website dedicated to helping you, the beginning blogger, learn more about weblogs. Weblogs, or 'blogs', are self-published personal websites with a special focus on personal insights and daily occurrences. My name is Andre, and I'll be your one-man tour guide to blogging here. When you're done with everything this site has to offer, you will hopefully have learned a whole lot about blogging, and also be well on your way to having and maintaining a great-looking blog. I have to warn you, though: Blogging is addictive and once you get started you may find it hard to stop!

Great, you're interested! Now let's take a look at this site, and how you are going to get around and learn everything I have to teach you. This site, Blogging 101, is my semester project for a Web Authoring class I am taking at Rutgers University. I myself have been blogging for almost a year, and that's where I got the idea for making a web site aimed at helping beginners. When I started blogging, there wasn't much information out there to help a beginning blogger learn what to do and why he was doing it. You had to figure out most of it on your own. I eventually got the hang of it, but I still believe that the learning process could have been much easier. After all, that's what blogging is all about: making it easy for anyone to publish their own content on the web.

The first thing we need to make sure of is your web browser specifications. This site was designed using a web design program called Dreamweaver 4, and it was designed for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, but there's no reason it shouldn't work on any other major browser. Your monitor resolution should be set to at least 800x600 in order for this site to load and work properly.
Is that all sorted out? Great! Here's the next thing: how did this site load? At the very top of the page there should be a large graphic that says "Blogging 101", with a set of links directly below it. If you can't see the "Blogging 101", or there is some other content above that, then click here and you should be set. Also, since this site is designed to hold the viewer's hand as he or she goes through the steps of starting a blog for the first time, it's very image intensive. If you don't have a high-speed internet connect, the pages may take some time to load. Bear with it, please. It's worth it!

Now, let's look at the links at the top of the page. These are going to be your primary means of mobility here. There are eight links up there. Here's a list of what they are, with a short description of where they lead:

home - this should take you back to this page. real handy if you get lost.

intro - a non-technical introduction to the world of blogging, including a short history of the weblog. don't worry, there's no homework involved.

sign up - an intensive walkthrough that takes you by the hand and shows you how to start your own blog with blogger.

getting started - a crash course in setting up your blog, including how to install a custom template, a guide to keeping your blogging habits fresh and sharp, and what to write in your blog.

example - here you will find a sample blog that i made especially for this site. it will be simple and easy, but at the same time it will look nice and clean. i'll also include the template i used, so that you can use it on your own site. nice, eh?

advanced placement - this is an area dedicated to advanced users, who have learned the basics and want to concentrate on the tougher and more technical aspects of blogging, like making your own template and incorporating a commenting system in your blog so that your readers can give you feedback, and other neat little things like that. It won't be step by step like the more basic introductions, but it will point you in the right direction.

random blog - this neat little link is brought to you courtesy of blogger. basically, it loads up randomly selected blog from the long long list of blogs that use the blogger api. it's a learning tool, and it's also endless hours of fun!

links - here's a whole bunch of links that I found to help you along your way.

Got it? Great! Now start exploring! The site isn't entirely finished yet, but it's coming along, and it'll be done in no time, before you know it. Happy blogging!