Blogging How To's

While blogging is relatively easy, it's helpful to learn some basic blogging how to's prior to posting your very first blog post.

If you are a newcomer to the Internet, you might have heard the word "blog," and wondered what it means. The word "blog" is derived from the word "weblog," which is either an online, ongoing commentary about a specific subject, or a personal journal about the important events in the blogger's life. Unlike traditional web pages, which usually contain evergreen content, blog posts are constantly changing.

Before you set up your first blog, it's important to understand why you want one. Some people use blogging as an online diary, while other people use it for different purposes, such as political commentary or promoting a business. Blogs can also be monetized by using affiliate links that sell products relevant to the theme of the blog. Knowing your reasons for blogging will help you determine the best blogging platform, templates, widgets and other important features.

Once you decide to set up a blog, you will need to choose a blogging platform. There are two types of blogging platforms:

• Hosted blog platforms
• Stand-alone blog platforms

Hosted blog platforms are usually free to use and simple to set up. As the name implies, these blogs are hosted on a blogging site. Examples of hosted blog platforms include:

• Blogger
• Word Press
• Live Journal

These free blogging platforms are perfect for people with limited technical skills. However, you will have a limited choice of design templates, as well as a generic URL. In contrast, stand alone blog platforms, also known as self-hosted blogs, require more technical savvy. These platforms require you to pay for your own domain name and hosting fees. However, you will have full control of your design template, and will be able to create a unique URL.

This type of blog platform can be useful for anyone who is blogging to promote a business. Examples of blogging software you might install on your self-hosted site include:

• PMachine
• Expression Engine
• Text Pattern

They say that a picture is worth 1,000 words, and posting photos is an important part of blogging how to's. Posting pictures on a blog is quite simple. When you write a blog post, you will notice an icon on the top of the page that shows a small image. Clicking on this will bring you to a page that allows you to upload a photo from the image file in your computer.

Keep in mind, if your images are extra large, you might need to resize them. If you are not familiar with photo cropping, there are a number of websites that allow you to shrink pictures.

Sometimes you find a YouTube video that you just have to share with your readers. Fortunately, this is a simple task. First, set up an account with YouTube. Then, go to your account page, click on "Blog Set-Up," and insert the URL for your blog. When you find a video that you like, click on the "Share" icon at the bottom of the video. It will give you the option to either email the video, are place it on your blog.

When you find an interesting article or website, you might want to share it with your readers. While simply posting the URL is acceptable, it looks ugly. Furthermore, depending on the blog platform, the link may not be clickable. Many people do not like to perform a cut and paste, so they may not bother to click on your links.

The best way to set up links on your blog is to first run your mouse over text that describes your blog. This will highlight the text. At the top of the posting page, you'll find an icon that looks like a map. Clicking on that icon will bring you to a page that allows you to post the URL of the link. This results in what is sometimes known as clickable text.

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