How do I start a blog?

fulloflead

fulloflead

Joined
May 3, 2002
Messages
6,192
I'm only savvy when it comes to reading, searching, etc. and I don't really know anything about creating things on the web.

If I wanted to create my own web "blog" where I had my own page people could book mark and check back to occasionally to read rants I post about current events, news, road ragers, whatever and create my own blog persona with a cool name like "smartypants" or something like that, how do I go about it?

I don't want one of those blogs where it looks like a forum and I share a page with a bunch of people. I'd even be willing to pay $30-$40/month for my own space.

If I can avoid it, I'd rather not have to learn software like GoLive or HTML. It'd be cool if there was just an interface (sort of like this one) where I can enter my daily rant, post links, etc.

Is it even possible?

.
 
Essentially you need the following things

1. Internet space
2. Some way of writing what you want on it.

There are loads of free web hosting sites. I use geocities for upliading things I want to share, but I dont have a blog on there. You may even get some web space with your internet package, a lot of packages give you a few Mb of space. Places like geocities allow you to purchase additional services depending on your requirements, sometimes things like your own URL instead of having their URL with your name after it (for example you might be able to get www.fulloflead.com instead of having to have www.dsfsdfsfw.com/fulloflead (these are just example URLs, I dont think they actually work))

There are a number of ways of creating a page to publish. You could use MS FrontPage/ Front Page Express. Some word processors like MS word let you save a file as an HTML file so you could create the page using that (it wont be as functional as a dedicated web publishing package however) Or you can write the code yourself. If you want a complicated fancy looking site then it can get very complicated to write the code yourself, but if you just want to put text up there its very simple. You can use the following template

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Enter Page title here</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY>

<P>Paragraph 1 goes here</P>

<P>Paragraph 2 goes here</P>

<P>Paragraph 3 goes here etc</P>

</BODY>
</HTML>


To use this you should copy and paste it into notepad and when you have finished, save it as index.html. To upload the file to the web site, most sites have a file upload web page that works like attaching a file to webmail.

Good luck!
 
Geocities seems to be part of yahoo and it makes you get a Yahoo account to get to it. That sound right?

What do you guys make of this:
http://www.blogger.com/start

I'd love it if, someday, somebody thought I was smart enough to cite or link to from elsewhere - like when news sites link to political blogs when they're reporting on the "blog buzz", but I can't imagine anyone linking to a chintzy one like blogger.com.

[Edit: scratch that. There are plenty on the Daou Report: http://daoureport.salon.com/default.aspx#38f56172-6959-4ad9-a6d0-08bac2c940f9 ]
 
I personally use LiveJournal, and I have been very happy with it!! I know other people that use Blogspot,I think that is what it is called. I started with the free version of LJ, then I went to to the paid for version!!
 
Cool, I didnt know there were pre made sites for blogging! Not surprising as I dont do it.

You might be able to pay extra on some of them so you dont have a chintzy URL, like you can with a lot of web hosting sites.
 
www.blogger.com is a good one (Owned by Google)

spaces.msn.com is another (Owned by Microsoft)

360.yahoo.com is another (Owned by Yahoo)

I have used all 3 and I think blogger is the best. I however am trying to stay as far away from Google stuff as I can. I feel they are a privacy timebomb waiting to happen.

:)
Cheers...
 
I'm on Blogger, and it's fine, except for their TOS. They say you can't crosslink to other blogs, but when someone does, they don't do anything about it. I had this ex-BF of my girlfriend spamming the hell out of my blog, and they didn't help me out.
 
Is it that easy? I've got a domain name that i've kept for a couple of years 'cos i wanted to try blogging. But it just sounds too hard.
 
No, blogging is really easy!! Check out any of the blog sites that several of us have mentioned.
 
I've had a blog since 3/2000 and I love it. It's cathartic and I've "met" a lot of cool people. The only problem is the time, it takes up a good chunk of time to write, and keep current. Then when you count all the other blogs I read, it's a good 90 minute deal every day.
 
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