Web 2.0: Get your own blog!

If you’ve been reading this and other blogs and thought “I want my own blog” or “I could blog better than those librarians,” now is your chance and I’ll tell you how.

Getting your own blog is really, really easy. Companies like WordPress (who the Library blogs with) and Blogger (a part of Google) make signing up for a blog as easy as signing up for a free email account.

The steps are:

1) Decide what you are going to blog about. Food and cooking? Your family? Your pets? Your life? Gardening? Cars? The possibilities are endless, but it’s generally easier to keep up a blog with a theme, rather than just random thoughts.

2) Sign up for an account through WordPress, Blogger, or another free blogging site (www.livejournal.com, www.thoughts.com, and clearblogs.com are just a few of the others). Blogger and WordPress are the biggies, but you don’t have to pick them just because they are big. Check out some of the blogs each service hosts and see if you like the way those blogs look. You can also read over the different features the services offer to see which you think you like better.

For your account you will need:

• A user name
• A password
• An email address
• A blog name
• What you would like the web address of your blog to be (this can be the same as your blog name). Your blog’s website will have the host’s name in it. For example: something.wordpress.com or something.blogger.com.

3) Pick a template. While many popular blogs have a personalized design done by either the blogger or a paid programmer, blog hosting websites offer many different templates for you to chose from. The template will affect the color and look of your blog.

4) Blog.

Step 4 is the hardest part. Your friends and family will never read your blog if you don’t regularly post and you will never gain more readership if you don’t have regular posts. I was never good at keeping a diary or a journal (though I try with every New Year’s resolution), so I have to stick sticky notes around my computer to remind me to blog and it still doesn’t aways work.

Blogging is fun and a good way to keep in touch with friends and family. Many folks I know started a blog when they had a baby as a way to let their friends and family know. They could restrict viewers of their blog to their friends, update the blog with pictures, first words, etc. Remember, if you don’t restrict who can visit your blog, ANYONE can see it. Before you post your secrets, think of who can see them.

Enjoy your new blog!

–Jennifer