How to Blog #1: Setting up your blog

As promised - although, I'll admit, a little later than I'd planned - here is the first How to Blog post. I thought I'd start off with a fairly basic post on how to set up your blog. This will be my own, personal advice, rather than that of any professional, but I like to think that I've done fairly well with my own blogging at Pen to Paper.

The first thing you need to do, is choose which site you're going to host with. There are loads of sites out there, but three of them really stand out; Blogger, Wordpress and Tumblr.
Blogger is the hosting site that I use, but I've also had a blog on Wordpress in the past. These two are more similar to each other than the third, and I believe, a little more flexible as well. From what I've seen of Tumblr, it's more suited to artistic blogging; so people like artists, photographers and the like post on there quite a lot, and with huge success, in some cases. My boyfriend graduated from BIAD last year, and he posts on a tumblr blog, so if you'd like to see his as an example, click here.
As for the other two, I'll start with Wordpress.

Setting up on Wordpress

It's really easy to create an account with Wordpress. When you get onto the home page, if you're not already logged in to an existing account, there is a large orange button that tells you to 'get started here'. This will take you to the page where you begin your blogging journey, first choosing a URL for your blog. This will start with the name you choose for your blog (if available, otherwise you'll have to get creative), followed by .wordpress.com.

Creating your account and blog (click to enlarge screenshot)

Next will be your username. This is not displayed on the blog, but is used as log in information. The rest is fairly standard and self-explanatory; all the usual stuff like passwords and email addresses. Just make sure that you end with clicking for a free blog (you can always upgrade to a paid blog space later). Then you can begin with your first blog post.

You can also start to play around with the design of your blog. When you access the dashboard for your blog, which can be found by going into the 'My Blogs' tab from the homepage, and then clicking onto 'Dashboard'.

Once on this page, there is a sidebar that runs down the left-hand side of the page. Down this, you will find a link that says 'Appearance' - this is where you can change and tweak your blog's design.
You are able to choose from a Theme, which is something previously uploaded to Wordpress for other bloggers to use on their own blogs. But you can also upload your own background and custom blog header.
Alternatively, you can create your own Custom design, but this costs $30 per year, and is something that I've not tried for myself, as I don't use Wordpress.

Setting up on Blogger

Setting up a blog on Blogger is, in my opinion, a lot easier and a lot more flexible than on Wordpress. Although, this is only in my experience. You log into blogger through your google account, so it's really easy. The google log in will appear on the blogger homepage, if you're not already logged in. If you don't have a google account already, they're really easy to set up, and you also get an email address and can customise your own iGoogle homepage with it, as well as set up a blog or two.

Click the image to enlarge

Setting up your blogger blog

Once you're logged in, your blogger homepage will appear. Here you can click to create a new blog. I'm using the new blogger interface on my account, but the 'new blog' button is just as easy to find in the old interface too.
When you click this, a block will appear over your homepage, asking you for the basic information you're going to need to set up your new blog; Blog name, URL and a template to start off your design (but this is easily altered to suit you, later on). When you've added this information, hit that lovely orange button at the bottom that tells you to 'Create Blog'. This will then take you back to your homepage.

From here, only the sky is your limit! Click the orange pencil button to create your first post.
Or, if you prefer, you can get going with your design before you get typing.

Click the arrow on the drop-down menu, and select 'Template' to get going with your design. This will bring up a page with two options for design; Edit HTML and Customise. Clicking 'Customise' will take you to the Blogger Template Designer.

Click to enlarge the image

Using the template designer, you can change the original template, upload a new background, change the widths of the blog, how many sidebars you have (and where you have them), and alter text font and colour, and even the colour of links, headers, footers etc. It's a really easy-to-use and flexible programme, that allows even the beginners to create a really stylish-looking blog.

Alternatively, if you are savvy with HTML and wanted to design your own template, you can, instead of selecting Customise, select the 'Edit HTML' button from the Template page, and add your code there.
Even if you're not familiar with HTML, there are many sites across the net that offer free templates of all shapes, sizes and colour schemes. There are usually easy-to-follow instructions on these sites, that instruct you on how to get the required code. Then you simply copy and paste the code into the 'Edit HTML' section and voilà - you have a beautiful, customised blog!

It is also really easy to add extra pages to your blog. Maybe you want to let your readers know a little more about you, about the blog - or if you review books, as I do on Pen to Paper, you think a review catalogue would be handy - these are easily achieved.

Go back onto your homepage, and again select the arrow for the drop-down menu. This time select 'Pages'. At the top of this new page, will be a button for new pages. Clicking on this button will give you two options; you can either create a blank page, or send readers to another web page, such as another blog, or even your youtube page, if you wish. As I've said, the site is extremely flexible.

Going back to our good, old friend - the drop-down menu - we can also select 'Layout', which will allow us to add widgets to the page. These can be pretty much anything you want them to be, and you can also move around the existing elements of your page, such as followers and post labels.
If you want examples of what these could be, head over to my other blog, Pen to Paper - I have several widgets, such as a Goodreads challenge widget (on the left sidebar), and my blog views counter. It's also possible to add images to the sidebars, like I've done on Pen to Paper, with my 'Currently Reading' image. The site also allows you to add a link to the image, which could take you to another site when clicked (I use this to redirect to either goodreads or The Book Depository pages for the books I am reading).

There is so much more that you can do with a blog, but I honestly believe that this is something you can only really learn by playing around with the sites yourself.
Using Google to search for instructions on using simple HTML can go a long way, and can help you format your blog post a little, but with big results. There are so many HTML tutorials on the internet, especially when blogger is concerned, so if you know what you want to learn to do, the chances are, you'll be able to find out how!

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The next How to Blog post will be about how to gain followers and get word out about your blog, so look out for that one very soon!
In the meantime, if you'd like to ask me any questions about this post, or just blogging in general, drop me an email at bcuenglishdelight@hotmail.co.uk and I will do my best to answer your questions, or point you in the right direction.
I'm also still looking for others to come and participate in this blog, so don't be shy - if you want to write a post for the blog, or have an idea, let me know at the same email address!