Launching Your First Blog

Creating a new blog is a simple step-by-step process. Fill in a few forms, enter a few pieces of information, and your new blog is up and running, piece of cake.

Creating Your Blog

The process starts on the Blogger home page (www.blogger.com). How you proceed depends on whether you already have a Google account.

Note

Prior to the launch of the new Blogger, you had to have a separate Blogger account to create a new blog. That's no longer the case; now you can create a blog using your standard Google or Gmail account.


If you already have a Google account, click the Sign In to the Blogger in Beta link at the top of the page and enter your Google account ID and password. This takes you to the Blogger Dashboard; from here, click the Create a Blog link.

If you don't already have a Google account, click the Create Your Blog Now link on the Blogger home page. This displays the Create a Google Account page. From there, enter your desired username, password, display name (separate from your username, if you like), and email address. Click the Continue link when you're ready to proceed.

Each blog post is accompanied by a date and time stamp (sometimes above the post, sometimes below), as well as links to any reader comments or other blogs that have linked to this post.

Click the Comments link to read any comments; click the Links to This Post link to see the links.

Although the format of the blog posts themselves is relatively standard, the elements in the sidebar are highly customizable. Most blogs include an About Me section (which might or might not include a photo), a listing of recent posts, a listing of archived posts (typically organized by month), and any other information you choose to include. If you don't like what you see, you can easily customize the contents and layout of your blog pagewhich we'll discuss next.