step 4: Creating Your Blog
1: Go To
Blogger.com
Blogger.com is owned by Google.com. It is a free site that will
allow you to create your own blog. In fact, you will have the option of creating
as many blogs as you like - all for free.
Put the following URL into your
web browser: <http://www.blogger.com/>
When you do, you
will see the following screen. From this screen, there are three things you can
do. You can sign in (which will be an option once you’ve created an account),
you can take a quick tour (which won’t be necessary if you read the remainder of
this chapter, although can be helpful to some learning styles), or you can
create your own blog now.
Click on the orange arrow that says, “Create Your
Blog Now”
2: Create an
Account
For this step, you will need to create a user name and password.
It does not matter what user name you choose.
You will also be asked what
display name you wish to use. When you post to your blog, this name will be
displayed at the end of each post. For now, go ahead and put “editor.” Later, in
Chapter 9, you will learn how to change this for each blog if you wish.
Finally, you will need to type in your email address (make sure it is a real
address) and check the area that says you agree to their Terms of Service. We
have included the Google’s entire Terms of Service in our Appendix.
Once
you have entered the information, click on the orange “Continue”
arrow.
3:
Naming Your Blog
Now you will get to name your blog. The first area is the Blog
Title of your blog. In this example, the blog title is Kidney Stones. That
means, the title at the top of the blog will say Kidney Stones. Later, we will
show you how to optimize your Blog Title for search engines. The Blog Title can
be changed at any time.
Next you will be asked to create a blog address or
URL. Notice that the URL does not have the traditional www at the front. Picking
a blog address can be a bit tricky. If you want to keyword optimize your URL for
AdSense or other marketing purposes, you will want to read Chapter 8 to find out
how to pick a good name.
Before clicking on the orange “Continue” arrow, you
will be asked to type in the characters you see in the picture below. This makes
sure that you are a person and not an autobot creating the blog.
There
is one other issue with picking a blog name - the name you want may already be
in use. If it is, you will see the following page after clicking continue:
At
this point, you simply choose a different blog address.
In the sample above,
you might want to try blog-and-ping using the dashes, try reversing the name to
pingandblog or ping-and-blog, try bloggingandpinging or blogging-and-pinging, or
any other number of variations.
Once you find a URL that is not taken, you
can move on to Step 4.
4: Choosing a Template
Blogger currently has 12 ready-made templates
to choose from. It really does not matter which template you choose. Each one
will allow you to blog and ping. In the following screen shot, “Son of Moto” has
been picked.
After
choosing your template, click on the orange “Continue” arrow. As long as you
have followed these steps correctly, you will be taken to a screen that let’s
you know that your blog has been created. Simply click on the orange “Start
Posting” arrow.
5: Creating
a Test Post
In order for the rest of the steps to work properly, you will need
to have some content on your blog. Adding content will allow you to create a
Yahoo RSS feed in Chapter 4.
The content does not have to be relevant and is
easy to add.
? Under “Title” add the word Test.
? There is no need to
add anything to the “Link” field.
? In the body of the post, once again, add
the word Test.
Then you click on the orange “Publish Post” button.
Once
you have published the post, you will see a screen that looks like this:
In
the example above, if you clicked on “View Blog” you would see that you now have
a blog with the URL <http://kidney-stones.blogspot.com/>, a title of Kidney
Stones, and one post titled “test.” That is all there is to creating your blog -
so let’s move on to the important settings you must know to make this system
work
.