What is a blog?
A blog is ‘those websites that publish the news and gossips you read on the web‘, a blog is ‘ghanaweb.com’, a blog is ‘citifmonline.com’, a blog is ‘this very website you are viewing now’. A blog is basically an informational site on the web consisting of posts, articles or stories. Below, I’ve shown how to create your own blog site without spending a pesewa.
Note: I performed the tutorial below on a computer, although it will work on mobile and tablet environment too. Blogs are basically used to share or publish stories, news, media files or advertise events. Unless you’re thinking of creating a website like ‘FACEBOOK’ or ‘GOOGLE’, then I’m sorry this is not for you, (Learn some programming). Otherwise, read on.
Signup for Blogger.com
First, you will need to goto www.blogger.com and sign in/signup with a Gmail account. Signing up for Blogger.com is basically the most important part of the process. After sign-up, the average net surfer can easily find their way into setting up and getting their blog done. Continue reading for a step by step procedure in setting up your first blog.
Login to your Blogger account
Once you are done setting up your account and logged in, you should see a page similar to Figure 0.1 below. Click on ‘new blog’.
choose blog name and address
Clicking on ‘new blog’ should open a popup window as in the Figure 0.2 below. Choose a title for your blog (your blog’s name). Then choose a suitable blog address of your choice (if you see the error message “Sorry, this blog address is not available”, try other names until you find the perfect name). In my case my blog title is “ghmode tutorial blog”, and my blog address, “ghmodetut.blogspot.com”
Note: your site address will be in the format, ‘mysite.blogspot.com’ not ’mysite.com’. This is because ‘.com’s are sold and no one will give them out for free.
Choose a template (I chose ‘simple’). Then click on ‘create blog’.
done
You should be directed to a page similar to Figure 0.3. If you are not seeing a page like Figure 0.3, then you should start over from the first step, other than that, GOOD JOB your site is up and running.
create first post
Now entering your blog URL (the blog address name you chose) into a browser’s address bar will open your blog. My own blog address was ‘ghmodetut.blogspot.com’. There you go!!! A fresh blog, with literally nothing good to offer.
The panel on the left side of the dashboard contains every tool you’ll ever need to manage your blog. Here, published posts become your blog’s contents. To create a new post, click on the ‘New post’ button on the left side of the page.
Using the text-editor provided, create and publish your first post.
See how my own blog looks here ghmodetut.blogspot.com
PS: There are other platforms that can be used to create free blogs. Some popular ones are WordPress, Tumblr and Weebly. And they almost function in the same way as Blogger does.
When writing this this piece, I kept wondering if it will even be of help to anyone, so I decided not to detail it that much. Was this article helpful?? Would like to learn more about Blogger and any of the other blogging platforms?? Leave a comment…