If you are wondering how to set up a blog and what the best way to create a blog is-then you have come to the right document! I’ll give you advice on which method(s) to use to create your blog depending on what kind of blog you want, whether you desire to make income from it, and how long you want to dedicate to setting up your blog.

Topics that I will help you with will be:

1. When to make a blog using a hosted blog site (like blogger.com or WordPress.com) or to create a blog using a blog platform (like WordPress.org, Typepad, Blogsmith, Movable Type).

2. Comparing hosted blog websites–Blogger vs. WordPress.com.

3. Comparing the WordPress.org blog platform to additional blog platforms.

4. Whether you should learn HTML, CSS, or some Programming.

5. What’s the best option to make money with your blog.

So read on if you desire to learn about making a kick butt blog!

Hosted Blog vs. Host Your Own Blog

Option 1) Use a shared domain blog

A shared domain blog is a type of blog costs nothing to host. You can set these up at https://www.blogger.com/start, http://wordpress.com/, etc. If you want to use this option, you’ll be creating what is called a “shared domain blog” because there will be a .blogspot or .wordpress after your blog’s domain name like http://nameofyourblog.blogspot.com or http://nameofyourblog.wordpress.com. Making a blog with a hosted blog is very simple to make and free. You can actually have a blog up and running within a couple minutes if you use blogger.com or wordpress.com!

Blogger vs. WordPress

If you are trying to figure out which to use– I’ll tell you that both are very simple to use and set up. In my opinion, blogger is a little more user friendly while WordPress is a little more pleasant to look at. Also, Blogger.com has nice ways to simply use Google AdSense Ads within your blog so you can earn money but WordPress is a little more customizable.

Option 2) Use a Host (that you pay for) to Host Your Site

If you decide to use this option you would use a blog platform (like WordPress–*from WordPress.org and not WordPress.com) and you pay a web host to place your blog on their servers. So then why would you want to pay and use a host you have to pay for you could use at blogger.com or worpress.com and host your blog for free? Actually, there’s several reasons:

1. You have more control over how your blog is designed.

2. You can monetize your site much better (more monetization options = more money for you!)

3. You’re blog will look more original-giving you more credibility.

If you are thinking about setting up a blog using this way the good news is it is pretty simple to do. Blog platforms can be uploaded to a server and created in a matter of minutes. There’s instructions on how to do this at all of the blog platform’s sites (ex. wordpress.org).

If You Want To Set Up Your Blog with a Host–do this:

1. Go to the host’s website and sign up for a hosting plan.

2. The majority of good hosts will place a one click installation button on their site for different blog platforms (like WordPress, Typepad, Blogsmith, Movable Type)-so just click that and you’re ready to start blogging (it’s that easy)!

*If the host you choose does not let you use a one click installation option for the blog platform you want to have, just follow these instructions:

1. Download a blogging platform (like WordPress (from WordPress.org), Typepad, Blogsmith, Movable Type, etc) from their different websites.

2. Start an account with a host.

3. Upload your blog platform to the host you choose.

4. Start blogging!

WordPress vs. the Rest:

I have tried out many blogging platforms and Content Management Systems (CMS) over the years and I have determined that the best blog platform is WordPress. It is very user friendly, it has a huge network of people using it (and updating it and pointing out any problems it has to developers), there are tons of helpful websites and forums to assist you if are having problems, and there are a lot of ways to easily customize your blog. Also, WordPress is venturing out and creating more complex features that other blog platforms don’t have. So, if you may want to make your blog to look more like a website that includes things like forums, shopping carts, or other advanced aspects–Wordpress is the blog platform for you. Also, WordPress one of the most easy blog platforms to put together.

Should You Learn HTML, CSS, or Programming?

If your blog’s at blogger or WordPress you do not need to learn these skills. Learning a couple basic codes for HTML will help customize your blog sometimes but you can always look for a certain code online when you want to do something on your blog. But, Set up your blog using a blog platform (like WordPress from WordPress.org) teaching yourself some HTML will definitely go a long way. I wouldn’t suggest spend a lot of time learning it however if you have a very basic skill set you can do a lot with your blog. *note-you can still set up a great blog without ever teaching yourself HTML, CSS, or Programming.

Make Money While Blogging?

Some bloggers can make a great living from just one blog! However, if you just want to blog about your life, a subject, or to get a reader base for an issue–than setting up a blog using a hosted blog site (like wordpess.com or blogger.com) is probably your best bet. Hosted blog sites are very easy to use and you don’t have to pay for hosting. That way you can just blog and not waste time with administrative things. However, if you want to create a blog to make money than creating a blog with a blog platform (like WordPress.org) is your best option because blog platforms give you many more ways to customize your blog, all the ways you can use ads on your blog, and what types of features you can use with the blog.

I’m hoping that this article has helped you figure out the ways to make a blog. Blogging is a very fulfilling hobby but the best thing about this hobby is that it makes me a lot of money! Surprisingly there are many easy methods to earn money with your blog that will make you income for many years. If you are interested in learning how to blog and earn money, about the five major pitfalls bloggers get themselves into, and how to decide on a niche for your blog then check out this free report at my website! This has got to be the best free report out there and it is made by Jason Gazaway- a 26 year old blogging legend who earns tens of thousands of dollars a month from blogging.

–article by Steve Sick from “How To Set Up A Blog“

Blogging is one of the most popular activities people do on the Internet today. According to Technorati, there currently are seventy-five thousand (75,000) new blogs everyday and about 1.2 million new blog updates everyday. As the activity of blogging gets more popular, there will be more and more tools that will be created to specifically address the needs of the blogging population of the Internet users. This article will attempt to catalog some of the best ever blogging tools created for users. To help users find the tools that they need, these blog tools are classified here into four main categories – blog publishing, blog reading, blog searching and the blog toolbox – a collection of tools important to the serious blogger.

Blog publishing

Blog publishing tools can be further categorized into three sub-categories: Online blogging services, do-it-yourself blog publishing platforms, and accessory blog-publishing tools. Blogging services provide the blog engine that you need to get yourself started in blogging as well as the hosting. Though most of the services offer this for free, some of them require that you become paying members in order to fully enjoy all the benefits.

Blogger – Google’s Blogger is one of the earliest blogging services and it helped popularize blogging. It is one of the easiest ways to get started blogging because of the focus on usability and easy blog creation. The Blog this feature, which is integrated in many Google tools, makes posting to Blogger possible in many different situations. It is also integrated with Google’s Adsense advertising program that makes monetization of your blog quick and easy.

TypePad – Typepad is the largest paid-blogging service around. As mentioned, a paid subscription is required to create a blog using the service. It uses the Movable Type blogging technology but it caters more to the non-technical users.

WordPress.com – one of the newcomers in the online blogging services, WordPress gets its credibility from the success and popularity of the blogging engine that it uses -Wordpress.

Xanga – Xanga is one of the largest blog-networks, boasting a user base of 27 million users worldwide. It edges over its competitors by offering excellent community features such as blog rings, metros, and a social networking profile system.

MSN Spaces – Although it is relatively a newcomer in the blogging services space, MSN Spaces boasts of a huge user base, because of the ease at which existing MSN services users were able to start blogging. The integration with the rest of MSN’s services (hotmail, messenger) makes Spaces a very good blogging option for the existing users.

Do-it-yourself blogging platforms on the other hand, only provide the blogging engine. Although you have to find your own hosting service, DIY blogging platforms give you more control in configuring your blog. Below are some of the best DIY Blogging platforms.

Movable Type – Movable Type powers TypePad and it adds the usual advantages of a server-side blogging platform: flexibility, more advanced configuration, and total control over your blog.

WordPress – WordPress is an increasingly popular open-source blogging platform that is written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database.

Radio Userland – Radio Userland, one of the earliest content management systems used by the pioneering bloggers, is still a good blogging platform choice. It has solid RSS features that include a built-in aggregator. Configuration is done in a desktop web server then it is upstreamed or sync to the web server. This gives the blogger a cached copy of the whole blog.

Blog posting tools are third-party applications that are used to compose and publish blog posts. These tools usually support multiple blogging services and are ideal for those without a persistent Internet connection.

W. Bloggar and BlogJet – these are two of the best blog-posting tools in the market, and both are available for free. They support almost all of the blogging platforms. They do what most web-based posting apps does, including rich text editing, with the added feature of being able to save your drafts offline.

Performancing for Firefox – a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows you to immediately compose a blog post while using the Firefox browser. It is Ideal for active bloggers who use Firefox as their web browser. It automatically saves your unpublished posts.

Blog Reading

RSS/Atom aggregators and other RSS tools belong to this category.

My Yahoo – My Yahoo tried to bring the concept of RSS subscription to the Internet masses. Though it lacks the more advanced features, it serves well as a good aggregator.

Google Reader – Google’s web-based RSS aggregator that features an AJAX-driven user interface. It has a good support for tags or labels, and features a very nice reading interface. One of its best features is its labels-sharing feature that allows you to put aggregated content to your blog.

Bloglines – Bloglines is one of the most widely-used web-based RSS Reader. It uses the traditional two-frame reading interface, and subscriptions are grouped into folders. It has a good blog-suggest feature, that uses linking analysis to suggest which blogs might be of interest to you based on your existing subscription set. You can also share your subscriptions using Bloglines.

Blog Search

Tools used to search information and blogs, and to watch the blogosphere for topics or issues being actively discussed.

Technorati – Technorati is one of the best blog search engine, feature wise, and is indexing over 49.4 million web blogs. It serves as a one-stop shop for those who want to know the current happenings in the blogosphere, including features such as blog ranking based on linking, personal aggregator (for those who login) and many other nifty tools.

Sphere – one of the newcomers in blog search that came even after many other engines have folded down already. It promised to deliver more relevant blog search results, and it rightfully did so, as attested by its early beta testers. It features a “sphere it” feature that allows you automatically query http://sphere.com to see topics that might be related to what you’re currently reading.

Blogger’s Toolbox

A collection of other tools essential to the serious blogger

Mint / Measure Map /Google Analytics – these are three different tools used to analyze your blog statistics. Mint specializes in giving you a big-picture snapshot of your traffic, somewhat lacking in the providing specific details, something that Google Analytics is good at. Analytics can provide detailed information on what’s happening on your blog, which contents are popular, what keywords used in searches that bring you readers, and many others. It features a calendar to specify the time range of the analysis that you want to see. Measure Map, like Analytics is a fresh acquisition of Google, but still in early stages. It somewhat sits in the middle of Mint and Google Map in terms of what information is provided.

Akismet – Akismet is a highly-acclaimed anti-comment spam plugin for WordPress blogs. It is free for personal use.

Feedburner – Feedburner is a tool that “burns” your RSS feeds in order to add tracking and analysis features. This way you can see statistics regarding your RSS subscribers.

The tools listed above are just a few of the many others that can help users; from those who are just starting to blog to those who want to become even better bloggers. It also includes some tools for searching and aggregating blogs, because a good blogger must learn to watch the blogosphere closely if it wants to be able to make more effective blog contents.

• ISBN13: 9780470168004
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
Want to break into blogging but don’t know where to start? Dynamic duo Joelle Reeder and Katherine Scoleri of The Moxie Girls^TM show you how to start your first blog, polish your prose, get involved in blogging communities, make sense of RSS feeds, podcasts, photos and more — all with fun, humor and attitude!

Inside you will find the need-to-know info to get your blog noticed: How to choose the right blogging platform or content management tool, select a web host, dress up your blog, manage blog content and keep your privates private! When you are ready for more, The Moxie Girls will treat you to insider dish on blog etiquette, analyzing blog traffic, blogging for business, creating podcasts and adding bling to your blog with plugins, add-ons and more. Throw in the refreshing cocktails, beauty tips and gossip with the Girls at the end of each chapter and you’ll be Blogging with Moxie in no time. So, what are you waiting for?

The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging With Moxie is packed with the content you need wrapped in casual, engaging dialog and a cheeky, bite-sized format.

• Bargain-blogging with tools such as WordPress®, TypePad®, and Vox
• Choosing a content management system like Expression Engine or Movable Type
• Managing blog content, using tags and moderating comments
• Selecting a professional designer and choosing from off-the-rack templates
• An introduction to podcasting and videocasting
• Finding, joining and managing blog communities
• Protecting your online identity
• Using a blog to better your business

The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie