How To Start a Blog on Blogger

If you already have a Google account, you're already one step along in the process. Just log in at the top of the page with your Google ID and password. This will tie your new blog into your account, and you'll now see Blogger listed on you account page as a service you're using.

If you don't have a Google account yet, that's fine. Just click the orange arrow at the bottom and you're ready to get started.

Email address - You can use any email account here. It doesn't have to be a Gmail account. The benefit to getting and using a Gmail account is that all your online services can be housed in the same area.

Password - Pick something fairly secure that you can remember.

Captcha - That's the weird letters that you have to type in to prove you're human.

Blog title - what you want to call the blog.

The best name is going to be something distinctive and descriptive, keeping in mind your purpose in establishing the blog. Example: I have one blog that's all about my experiences with Search and Rescue. I call it "Deb's Search and Rescue Stories" -- plain, simple and to the point. Think about the purpose of your blog and what might best help people scanning titles decide to read it.

Blog address - the URL where your blog will live

Your web address can relate back to your title or your purpose for the blog. You don't want it to be completely unrelated, and you might find you have to get creative to get an URL to use. Type in the one you'd like to have, then click "check availability" to see if you can get it.

As you can see here, I attempted to start a new blog, this one about crafting. I typed in the word "crafts" for my domain URL, but it was taken.

I tried again, this time with something a little less generic, and it was available.

Blogger comes with 16 basic templates (12 of which you'll see here), some of those with different color options. Pick one that appeals to your taste or fits with your theme. Then click the "Preview" button to get a closer look to see if you really like that design.

Don't get too hung up on the design at this point. It's probably the quickest and easiest thing to change later if you decide you don't really like lime green or polka dots.

Your Settings tab gives you control over how your blog is seen and published. There are a lot of different options here and, for the most part, the defaults will work just fine for you as you get started. You'll need to "Save Settings" at the bottom of each page whenever you make changes.

Basic - Change the name of your blog, whether it can be picked up by search engines or (gasp!) delete it.

Formatting - How many posts per page, time/date formats, language and template.
For the most part, you're likely to be doing something different in every post, so the template might not be a useful feature for you. I use it for my book review blog because every review uses the exact same format.

Comments - Control how and who gets to leave comments on your posts. I have both of mine set to moderate the comments (meaning I have to approve them before they can be seen) and to use word verification (or captcha). That's the weird non-word you have to type in to verify you're a human. These help to keep spam at bay.

Archiving - You've seen the lists on the side of a blog page that allow you to go back to see what was written in July 2007? This is where you decide how that information will be presented - monthly, daily, etc. Or no archive at all.

Site Feed - You can determine whether people getting your feed should see complete entries or if you want them to just get a teaser so they have to come back to your blog to read the entire thing. You can also put in your feedburner feed here if you've established one.

Permissions - You can have several people as authors of your blog so you don't have to do all the work. All you need to have for them is an email address. You can also limit who actually gets to read your blog. This allows you to use the blog for private information sharing - within a family, for example.

This is where you can change your template or just individual elements of the page to make it more uniquely yours.

Page Elements - Add items to the page or rearrange them. These are mostly the elements outside of your blog posts themselves - your profile, a link list, archive, etc. You can include AdSense, lists, polls, all kinds of things. The size of the elements will be determined by your template, as well as the way they look. You can also drag and drop to rearrange the order.

Preview the page to make sure you like the changes you made, then hit save to make them part of the template.

Fonts and Colors - This is the page where things can start to get dangerous. Here you can change the colors of individuals page elements - links, background, text - to whatever you please. But be careful! If you aren't the least-bit-design-savvy, you can end up with an unreadable mess! Remember that the point of having a blog is for it to be read, even if it's just by you a year later. And pale pink on white can't be read. You can also change the fonts used in different areas and the same rules apply. Just because there are six different choices doesn't mean you have to use all six!

Edit HTML - The main reason you might want to go here is to download a back-up of your template. This will save all the changes you've made in the first two areas. If you're feeling confident, you could edit the code directly or import a template you get from a free site. But remember that what you say on the blog is what's going to get people to your site. Google doesn't give you extra points on the search engine page because your blog is pretty!!

Pick New Template - Takes you back to the original 16 options so you can choose a different one. Note the warning that choosing something new will wipe out any changes you've made to your current template. You might want to make sure you're pretty content with your choice before you start playing with page elements and colors.

Create - Here's where you'll come anytime you want to write a new post. Type your post title or headline in the Title box, then your text into the text box. You have the option of editing or typing your post directly as HTML or in Compose mode. The formatting options will change between the two. In order to see how your post is going to look, click the Preview link and the post will appear directly below in the same size and font that it will be in your blog.

Edit posts - Discover a great picture you need to add to something you already posted? Or need to correct something or add an update? Here's where you do that. Just click "Edit" and it will take you to the same type of window you used to create the post. Make your edits, then hit publish. You can also apply a label to a post, see which posts have comments, delete a post, generally just manage your posts.

Moderate comments - This is where you'll see comments made on your posts if you have chosen to moderate comments. You approve them for publication or reject them.