Making Your First Blog

About This Post

Synopsis: I will be showing you step by step how to get started in creating your first blog.
Difficulty: Super easy to extremely difficult
Suggested hosting site: Blogger.com
Cost: Free or... well... the sky's the limit!

The fluff (read my story or skip ahead!) (Still don't get it? Click here!)

If writing is your thing...and if reading is your thing...and you would love to do a little of A. and B., then why not start a blog. I've always wanted to start a blog, but never really took the initiative till now, which has inspired me to start with this post.

I've done a lot of research and will provide the basics and suggestions of starting your very own free blog. The internet is a vast place to explore and well, with a lot of large places it can be pretty frightening and outright confusing. Luckily, I've looked into what you need to get started.

1. First, lets pick a topic... or not.

So you want to start a blog. The first thing you need to figure out is what you would like to blog about. This can be literally anything at all. Now, it is easiest to pick a topic or you can do what I'm doing and just pick any topic that interests you. You can even write about your life and adventures. Blogging could be a great hobby especially for an aspiring writer or a way to make some extra money, or so its said. Whatever your interests are, you should keep it fun and interesting!

2. Pick a name.

Pick something fun and interesting. Some choose their own name, something related to their topic, or something related to their genre. Some common (and popular blogs/names out there) are as follows: - Mashable- TechCrunch- Lifehacker and well, these are pretty self explanatory and on the professional level. You definitely want to come up with something unique and not taken by others. Something to grasp an audience.

3. Pick a host for your blog

You will need something to run your site off of, whether it's a website or blog, you will need a hosting site (At least as a beginner). The nice thing about this is that there is a lot of hosting sites out there that have nice security packages and are for the most part free (upgrade packages cost money). The more popular hosting sites that I've looked into and are best for ease of access are: Wordpress, WIX, Blogger.com, and Google Sites. There are many other's but not with the same simplicity and tools, or they cost a little bit to get started.

4. Build your site/blog

Once you've picked a host you will be offered tools. Again, out of the hosting sites I've looked into (Wordpress, Wix, Blogger, Google sites), all of them offer free web building tools. For starters, with the free versions you get a limited amount of templates and tools to build your website and making a website is as simple as dragging and dropping and clicking what you want done. You can come up with a website within minutes especially with the hosts I've listed in this post. They have super easy web tools, templates, and domain registration options.

My personal recommendation and by far the easiest to work with is Blogger.com. Most of the tools are point and click or self explanatory. It allows you to jump in and just get started on your first post. The templates are nice and its flexible with allowing you to add your own html and images. Also, with your decision, it is advertisement free.

WIX.com and Wordpress are free but have advertisements. They are super useful in the same way and the leaders when it comes down to easy site building however, ads on top of ads can turn off your audience.

Google Sites sadly is at the bottom of my list (sad because I like Google products). They offer the same web building tools and templates but on a much more limited scale. Also, you can add only so much html, virtually no CSS, and I haven't tried Java script but I'm sure it won't accept it, or at least very well. For a very basic and maybe "class project" style website, google sites may be good, but not horribly best for a full blown blog. If your concerned about not having everything in one place, Google owns Blogger.com too, so there's that!

5. And your done!

All in all, you really just need to experiment with which platform you like most. Think of Blogger.com as Nintendo, Wordpress and WIX.com as your Playstation 4, and Google Sites as ...Pong. Blogger.com is old but easy and stable. Wordpress and WIX.com are flashy, have more features, and preferable on the professional level. Google Sites is very simple but there really isn't much to it.

Next thing you need to do is publish that sucker and get some fun topics on the internet for people to enjoy!

Easy mode

1. Pick a topic

Pick something simple. From your life adventures, your interests, advice, etc.

2. Pick a name.

Pick something cool or catchy...and well, not taken.

3. Pick a host for your blog

Most recommended to least recommended: 1. Blogger.com (Blogs) 2. Wordpress (Blogs and websites) 3. WIX.com (Blogs and websites) 4. Google Sites (Blogs and websites)

4. Build your site/blog

Build your site using the tools provided by your host. All of these hosts use easy to use templates and drag and drop options that require no coding at all. These sites do allow you to embed some of your code if you like but it is completely optional.