Chapter 2. Starting a Blog
In This Chapter
Signing up with Blogger to get started
Writing your first blog post
Managing your blog settings
Customizing the template to match your style
Enough chitchat. It's time to start blogging! Part of the beauty of a blog is how quickly and easily you can get going — you can go from zero to blog in about 10 minutes with good blog software. (Of course, the medium's detractors say this convenience is responsible for a lot of self‐indulgent navel‐gazing, but I'm sure you have great plans for your little piece of the Internet.)
The first question is what kind of blogging software to use. Many bloggers, no matter what software they ultimately choose, find it useful to begin a test blog where they can experiment and figure out how to use the medium. There's no better way to do this than with what's called a hosted blog software solution.
Hosted blog software is a blogging tool that lives on the Web server of a company that provides blogging services. When you use hosted blogging software, you use that company's Web server to post to your blog, and the company provides you with a Web address. You don't need any of the resources that a normal Web site requires — a domain name, Web site hosting, HTML or FTP software — to create a blog. Best of all, many hosted blog software solutions are free …at least at the basic level. (If you want service upgrades, be prepared to fork over some cash.)
The alternative to hosted blog software is server‐based blog software
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