The last years the internet scene changed completely with the arrival of blogging platforms that allowed people effortlessly to create their own website to post their thoughts,news and photos. With predefined templates, easy tools for posting and a friendly management system they became an instant hit. Due to their success, many developers have created plugins that can transform a blog to a full-fledged web site. A blogging platform is an excellent tool for someone that just wants to deal with writing content and not the other aspects of website building and management. The pioneer of this blogging revolution is without a doubt Blogspot.
Setup your Blog
Creating a website in Blogspot is absolutely free. You can create an account using your gmail account or using any other email address. Using a gmail account requires less steps though, since you already have an account with Google (Google owns blogger). In addition, using a gmail account means that all your other google services are interlinked with your blog management system (posting to your blog from Google Documents for example), you can put google apps in your blog and instantly be singed-in to your blog management system when you are singed-in your gmail account.
All you need to setup your blog, when you have created your account, is provide Blogspot with the name of your blog and the nickname under which your posts will be. After that you select a color template and the basic setup is complete. You can start blogging right away!
Initially when you createblog using Blogspot the address of your blog will be TheNameOfYourBlog.blogspot.com. However you can change that if you own a domain name. The management system allows you to direct your blog to your domain name thus giving your site a more professional address than having blogspot.com on your URL. Even if you do not own a domain yet you can buy one directly from Blogspot for 10 dollars a year and Blogspot will automatically setup everything for you. This will alow you to enjoy all the features of the Blogspot platform while at the same time you have your very own URL.
Customize your Blog
Blogspot has many ready made templates that you can apply to you blog with a click of your mouse. However, you do not want your blog to have the exact same look with thousand other blogs on the Internet. In addition you might want to have many columns and not just the generic two column template. Blogspot allows you to fully customize your blog giving you direct access to the template's source. With some knowledge of HTML and CSS you can heavily modify a ready made template to match your needs or you can even create one from scratch and upload it to you blog using the build-in template upload feature.
Blogspot provides you with a selection of components that you can put on your website to enhance its functionality such as link lists, polls, image slideshow and more. What if you needed something more fancy or something that provides more functionality though? You are in luck because there are literally thousands of Blogspot compatible components (widgets) out there that you can use in your blog to provide everything from a simple social bookmarking button to calendars and flash games. There are many websites that provide Blogspot widgets. A very good one with thousands of free widgets is widgetbox.
Another great thing about using Blogspot is that you do not have to worry about backing up you website (documents, code, etc.) since everything is looked after by google. With regular websites that you host somewhere else you are responsible for backing up all your data, databases etc. so if something goes horribly wrong you will not to loose everything.
Start posting
So now everything looks they way you want them to look, you have deployed your custom widgets and you are ready to start enriching you website with great content. Blogspot does an excellent job at assisting you create and manage content. Blogspot features a WYSIWIG editor to create posts with text, images or even video. If you later decide that you want to edit or delete your post you can. In addition you can assign tags to your posts in order to keep them organized and let your vistors easily find what they are looking for. There is a build-in component that you can deploy that shows the tags that link to the relevant posts. If you want other people to be able to post to your blog, Blogspot lets you assign other authors with limited permissions.
Blogspot is a very good choice if you do not want to trouble yourself with complicated website management. It allows you to heavily customize your website and use you own address for it. All you have to worry about is writing new content. Good blogging and all the best.
Setup your Blog
Creating a website in Blogspot is absolutely free. You can create an account using your gmail account or using any other email address. Using a gmail account requires less steps though, since you already have an account with Google (Google owns blogger). In addition, using a gmail account means that all your other google services are interlinked with your blog management system (posting to your blog from Google Documents for example), you can put google apps in your blog and instantly be singed-in to your blog management system when you are singed-in your gmail account.
All you need to setup your blog, when you have created your account, is provide Blogspot with the name of your blog and the nickname under which your posts will be. After that you select a color template and the basic setup is complete. You can start blogging right away!
Initially when you createblog using Blogspot the address of your blog will be TheNameOfYourBlog.blogspot.com. However you can change that if you own a domain name. The management system allows you to direct your blog to your domain name thus giving your site a more professional address than having blogspot.com on your URL. Even if you do not own a domain yet you can buy one directly from Blogspot for 10 dollars a year and Blogspot will automatically setup everything for you. This will alow you to enjoy all the features of the Blogspot platform while at the same time you have your very own URL.
Customize your Blog
Blogspot has many ready made templates that you can apply to you blog with a click of your mouse. However, you do not want your blog to have the exact same look with thousand other blogs on the Internet. In addition you might want to have many columns and not just the generic two column template. Blogspot allows you to fully customize your blog giving you direct access to the template's source. With some knowledge of HTML and CSS you can heavily modify a ready made template to match your needs or you can even create one from scratch and upload it to you blog using the build-in template upload feature.
Blogspot provides you with a selection of components that you can put on your website to enhance its functionality such as link lists, polls, image slideshow and more. What if you needed something more fancy or something that provides more functionality though? You are in luck because there are literally thousands of Blogspot compatible components (widgets) out there that you can use in your blog to provide everything from a simple social bookmarking button to calendars and flash games. There are many websites that provide Blogspot widgets. A very good one with thousands of free widgets is widgetbox.
Another great thing about using Blogspot is that you do not have to worry about backing up you website (documents, code, etc.) since everything is looked after by google. With regular websites that you host somewhere else you are responsible for backing up all your data, databases etc. so if something goes horribly wrong you will not to loose everything.
Start posting
So now everything looks they way you want them to look, you have deployed your custom widgets and you are ready to start enriching you website with great content. Blogspot does an excellent job at assisting you create and manage content. Blogspot features a WYSIWIG editor to create posts with text, images or even video. If you later decide that you want to edit or delete your post you can. In addition you can assign tags to your posts in order to keep them organized and let your vistors easily find what they are looking for. There is a build-in component that you can deploy that shows the tags that link to the relevant posts. If you want other people to be able to post to your blog, Blogspot lets you assign other authors with limited permissions.
Blogspot is a very good choice if you do not want to trouble yourself with complicated website management. It allows you to heavily customize your website and use you own address for it. All you have to worry about is writing new content. Good blogging and all the best.
