Blogging 101 - Getting Started

You've made your first post, you've changed your template, what's next? It's time to mess around with your settings! Clicking on the "settings" tab at the top of the screen from anywhere within blogger will take you to the settings section of the application. this setting will be set aside with a new set of tabs, which each relate to different kinds of settings. tabs

This part of the whole blogging process is less daunting than modifying the templates page, by far, but still more complex! Let's go over all the area, so you know what's what.

The first page, which accompanies the "basics" tab, allows you to change the title and description of your blog, and also whether you want it public or not. there's also the option to delete your blog. if you choose to delete the blog you will lose everything! no changes, entries, or customizations will survive the deletion, and it's permanent. don't click that button unless you're absolutely sure you want to do that.

as with any of the other tabs in this area, your changes will not be saved until you click the "save changes" button, and even then it will not be evident on your blog until you republish at the "posts" page.

the second tab, "publishing", lets you choose whether you want to publish to blogspot or whether you want to publish to your own host. there's also the option of picking which blogspot url you want to use if you are publishing to blogspot. i won't go into the details of hosting your own blog, because it's very complicated and it's different depending on your host anyway. if you do choose to do that, however, you'll need a lot of information about your host in order to publish.

the third tab, "formatting", has more of a direct effect on your blog, so we'll look more in-depth into that page. settings

First up, you have the "Show" field which lets you customize how many entries you want to display on your blog's main page. You can specify a number of days' posts, or a number of actual entries. This is aesthetic, and entirely up to you.

"Date Header Format" and "Timestamp Format" options give you various choices on how you want your date and time to appear on the blog. This is also aesthetic, and also entirely up to you.

The "Time Zone" field lets you select your time zone, mine is Eastern Time (GMT -5:00), yours might be different depending on where you live.

Your "Language" should most likely stay at English. If not, that's up to you.

the "encoding" option is complicated and i won't explain it to you here. don't mess around with it for now.

Leave "Convert Line Breaks" at yes. this way, when you press enter while typing out your entries, it will register that enter as a line break. otherwise you'd have to use html tags to skip to the next line and do other formatting tricks.

"Show title Field" is optional as well, and just gives you the choice of whether to give your entries titles or not.

after you've saved your changes, you can look at the "archiving" tab to see what's there. here you can choose how often you want blogger to archive your entries, and whether you want a separate index page for your archives or not. since i'm not teaching you about archiving right now, we'll skip this part.

the "members" tab allows you to add other users to your blog, so that you can keep a community blog. running a community blog is hard without advanced blogger knowledge, so as a beginner you shouldn't have any reason to mess around on this page. later, when you learn more, you can experiment and learn about community blogs if you so desire.

Well, it looks like you've got the basics to blogging down. all that's left now is practice. Keep posting. What are you supposed to post? That's entirely up to you. Some people post daily synopses of their lives. Others like to link to interesting sites that they've come across in their web-surfing. Still others like to post daily poetry, or daily jokes. Some even post what they eat or their weight every day. It'll probably take you a while to get a hang on your own individual posting style, but that's crucial to keeping this up: blogging is all about doing things your own way. The only advice I can give you to make blogging easier (aside from this tutorial, of course) is that you have o post daily, and don't be afraid to experiment. The more often you post, the better your sense of style and audience will come to you. Who is going to see your site? Are you going to keep it private so no one but you can see it? Are you going to Give your friends the link so they can see what's new with you every day? Are you going to make it public so everyone the world over can read? The choice is yours.

Good luck! If you want, you can continue to browse around this website to find other information. The "Advanced Placement" section will have links to more advanced tools and features for when you decide it's time to add something else. Check out my Sample Blog where you can check out a custom template just for this site, that you can even use on your own site!

page 1|2|3