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Sunday, February 3, 2013

Tutorial: How to Make a Free Blog on Blogger.com (video)

Blogger is one of the best free blog publishing service provided by Google, for people to share text, photos and videos. It supports about 50 languages, and is used by millions of bloggers around the world.

Why Blogger is the best free Blogging platform? See my previous post for details.

A blog on Blogger can be set up in 5 minutes.

Here's a step by step guide on how to make a free blog on Blogger.com, for those who is looking for creating a blog for the first time.

Step 1: Go to http://Blogger.com
  • If you already have a Google account (Gmail), you can login by using your existing Gmail account. If you choose this option, login first, then go to step 3.
  • Or, create a new Google account  by clicking on the red color SIGN UP button at the top right corner of the page (screenshot below)


Step 2: Register a new Google account

 You will see following form for registering a new Google account.





Note: Make sure to put a check mark in front of the "I agree the Google Terms of service and Privacy Policy" option.

Fill in all the required fields, click on Next Step button

Step 3: Create a new blog (a)- management interface


When you see above screen, click on New Blog button at the left to start to create a new blog. 

Note: 
  • Because it's the first that you create a blog, so you see "Your Blogs (0) " at the left corner. Once your blog is created, it will change to "Your blogs (1)".
  • You can create more than one blogs in one Google account.
Step 4: Create a new blog (b)- Blog title and url address




Type in your Blog Title and the blog address you'd like to use, then choose a blog template.
  • In my case, I use "how to blog" as title, and trying to use HowToBlog.blogspot.com as blog address, it shows "Sorry, this blog address is not available"- that means, the address is used by someone, I have to pick another address.
  • The final address I got was http://start-a-free-blog.blogspot.com/,  and the blog title I used was "How to Start a Free Blog".
  • You can pick any template at this moment, and change it later
On both the blog title and address is Ok, click on Create Blog ! button at the bottom of the page.

Step 5: Blog management interface

Now, it comes back to the Blog Management interface as in step 3, the difference is this time, it shows that you get 1 blog, and shows the blog name there. (screeshot)

Click on the down arrow beside the yellow pen icon at the right corner.



Step 6: Choose "Posts" to manage the posts

From the expended pull-down menu, click on "posts" to manage the posts


Step 7: Post manager

Because you do not have any posts yet, so there's no post listed.

Click on the orange New Post button at the left to create a new post.


Step 8: Post editor

You come to the post editor, from here, you can create your first post with text, music, videos inside.



(1) Your post title
(2) Your post content
(3) Add a link to another webpage
(4) Add a photo to the post
(5) Add a video to teh post
(6) Add a label (Category) to your post (details)
(7) Swith to HTML mode, to add HTML or JavaScript codes directly into the post
(8) Once the post is ready, preview it
(9) If you sure the post is good to be published, click on Publish (for first time) or Update (for 2nd time) to make it published to the public !

Step 9: dashboard

Once the post published, it will go back to your blog dashboard as in below.

Click on View Blog button at the top  to see your blog as other internet visitors.


 Step 10: You blog and the first post



 Above screen shows how your blog is look like, with only one post.

You can click on New Post at the top right corner of the page to go back to the post editor to compose another post !

Congratulations ! You get your Blogger blog up running and the first post published !

Video

Watch the official video below, it will give you more sense of how Blogger  works:


 
This blog

This blog is built on Blogger- it's an example for you to see how a blog on blogger can be customized and how it can be looked like.


Later

Yon can completely customize your Blogger blog's template, the layout, the color, fonts and everything you want in later any time. 

I will have more posts come out to cove the topics of customization for Blogger.

More reading

If you find above post helpful, you may also like this post:

What's the Difference Between Post and Page in Blogger and Wordpress ?



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