Welcome to the Get Blogging with Blogger series. Blogger is a blogging tool from Google. It allows you to easily create your very own blog for free. Your blog can be about anything you like and it is a great way to share things that interests you with friends and family in the whole world. Setting up your blog is simple.
First, you need to create a Blogger account. If you already have a Google account you can sign in using your Google credentials here. If not enter in your email address, retype it, select password, retype it. Enter in your display name that you like to be known as. Enter in the word verification and after you read and agree to the terms of service click on continue. Next, choose a name for your blog. You can always change this later. Then select the URL you want to use. This must be original so check to see if it’s available and if it’s not, just choose a new one. The last step is to browse through these themes and choose the one you like best.
You can change this as well later so no pressure and that’s it. Now, it’s time to start blogging. So now that you’ve got your own blog. You want to customize the way it looks. First, click on layout. From here you can go back and choose a new template if you want. Just click on the various ones to see what they look like. I will choose this one. You also have the option of choosing the colors that go with the template.
First, select the element that you want to change and then choose the color. You’ll see it updating below. You can always go back to the default and Blogger will shuffle blog colors. If you are not sure what you want to pick. You can also customize the font. Just pick the one you like best. Make sure you save your changes, when you are happy with what you see and then you can view the blog and here it is.
In the second episode in this series, I showed you how you can customize the look of your blog by changing the template and the colors and font. You can also add elements to your blog. Almost everything here can be edited to include what you like. You can choose a different navigation bar which always sits on the top of your blog. You can also add and remove gadgets. Gadgets are little extras that may help people navigate in your site and it adds a little personality. You can choose things like blog list which shows up all the blogs you read, a slide show of your photos and subscription links, so your readers can easily subscribe to your blog with their feed reader. Just click on the plus sign and then save. There are so many gadgets really to many to go over here. So make sure you explore.
All of the gadgets can be reordered by clicking on them and dragging and dropping them into the order you like best. They can also be edited. I will change this title from followers to fans and you can easily remove them. You can also browse your gadgets by featured, most popular, newest and by category. Click on save and that should be the changes. Now you can see my blog is really getting a personality. Your blog settings allows you to add even more content to your blog. You can change the title, add a brief description. Choose to have your blog listed in the Blogger listings which could help more people find your blog. You also decide if you want search engines to find your blog, just to name a few.
If you own your own domain, you can also have that point to your Blogger blog and choose to change the address of your blog here which you selected when signing up. There are settings for everything here. Your formatting which allows you choose how many posts to show on the first page. The date, the tine format, you can choose to show or hide comments. Choose who can comment and you can also choose to enable comment moderation which means that you have to approve comments before they appear. You can decide how often to archive your post. Choose how much of your post will show up in someone’s feed reader. You can also choose to email people when you publish something new. Just enter in their e-mail address is here.
You can also post to Blogger from your email account. You just need to send it to this address here and choose to have it publish immediately or save as a draft so you can publish it later. You can also choose to add other authors to your blog. Just enter in their email address and they will be invited to post to your blog. By default, your blog is available for anyone on the internet to read. You can change that though to allow only certain people you choose by entering in their email addresses here or restrict it to only blog authors. Okay so you are finally ready to write that first blog post, right? It is almost as easy as writing an email, click on new post.
First, give your post a title and write what you like to share here. If you highlight the text, you can change the font, the font color and the alignment. You can also easily insert photos and selecting one from your computer or by using your URL. Then select where you like it placed, choose the image size, accept the terms of service and click on upload image and it’s done. You can also add video the same way.
When you're all through you want to add labels which describe what your blog post is about. This will make it easier for people to find the content there looking for on your blog. On each post, you can choose to allow or not allow comments and select the date and the time you wish for it to be published. If you want to publish it immediately just leave this as is. You can preview it first here and if you're happy with it then click on publish post and you can view it here.
Since this is your blog you have control over what you published and you can go back and make changes or remove post all together if needed. If you simply want to make a change to a post then click on edit then you can make your changes and republish it.
Clicking on this arrow will allow you to see what the post is first. You can also choose to delete a post here. It cannot be undone so make sure you really want to delete it. If you check this box next to one or many of the posts, you can add new labels to them. If you have lot of posts to go through you can search here. If you are unsure if you want to delete a post you can go into edit and simply save it as a draft and it will be stored in your draft for later use.
Blogger allows you to create a profile that you can choose to share with your readers. Click on edit profile. Choose if you even want to share your profile and if you want to show your real name. You can also choose to show your email address.
If you have more than one Blogger blog you can choose to display those blogs on your profile. You can also change your email address, your display name and add your real name here. You can also add a photo from your computer or from the web and an audio clip. Just add the URL. Then add basic information like your gender, birthday, your homepage URL, your location, work history any information you feel comfortable sharing. Then click on save when you are done and this is my updated profile. This is what people will see when they choose to view my profile since I have chosen to make it available.
Blogger is also a great place to find new blogs to read. You can also choose to read some of those blogs right from here. Blogs that I'm following is where you can add blogs that you read so you’ll always see them in content. First, click add and enter in the URL of the blog. If you use Google reader, you can import your blogs here. Then choose if you want to be shown as publicly reading this blog or if you want to keep that private and remain anonymous and just like that as summary of the posts on this blog had been added.
If you click on the links, you will be brought the site to read the entire the post. Blogger buzz is where you can find the latest news from the Blogger team about updates and changes to the service. Blogs of note or popular blogs that you can browse here. If you like, one click on the title and from here you can read on or click on next blog and you will be brought to another Blogger blog. It is a fun way to discover new blogs you may not otherwise found.
Besides giving you an outlet to share stories and information with people, Blogger also allows to earn extra money by adding AdSense from Google. AdSense are relevant ads that are put on your site. When people click on those ads, you can earn a little bit of money. You need to set up an AdSense account. Click on sign up and then enter in the website your on and the primary language. Check these boxes to ensure that you will not place ads on the site with incentives for people to click on them or with an appropriate content and select your account type which in this case is individual and your country.
You then need to add your contact information including your full name, your address, your phone number everything here so Google will know where to send the check. You have to confirm information in an email and it may take a couple of days for your site to be approve for AdSense but after you do you’ll be able to see your earning reports. Change your AdSense setup and manage your account.
Right now we’re in the area of your blog known as the dashboard. You can access the dashboard here from anywhere on your blog as long as you're log in. The dashboard is where you can access various parts of your blog. It is a place where you should go when you are really not sure where to find what you’re looking for.
If you run into problems or have, questions go to the help section. You can visit the help center which contains how-to documents that maybe useful to you. There is also a Blogger help group where you can view and ask questions from other Blogger users. Blogger status is where you can find information about scheduled maintenance, known issues or problems that Blogger is aware about but they are still maybe some help for you here. Blogger buzz is the news straight from the Blogger team. If you do not want to bother those resources you can always just do a quick search here for your question and I'm sure you’ll find just what you’re looking for.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services