So you want to start a blog?

This blog is actually a substitute for a traditional handout for a class I will be teaching on using Blogger to create blogs for sharing family history information.

There are over 3,000 blogs having to do with genealogy / family history.
(See http://www.geneabloggers.com/genealogy-blogs/)

While my purpose for building this is to help those who will be taking my class, the steps for building a blog are the same whether your topic is genealogy, gardening, building bird houses, cooking, calligraphy or arguing politics.

How to Use This Blog

Most blogs are written so that every NEW post appears on top, with the older material being pushed down below.  I have chosen to order this one a bit differently, keeping this intro post at the TOP as an easy introduction for people who are new to blogging.

I have created "hot links" on the side bar where it shows the titles under category headings.  You can pick and choose what order you read things in by clicking on those titles to bring up that specific post.

That way you can easily go back and review any particular step you are trying to master as you set up your own new blog.

I am not a pro or an expert by any means.   But I've made a few blogs over the past ten years and have learned a thing or two in the process.  Rather than going through all the trial and error I did, this guide is intended to help anyone who wants to experiment with a non-commercial personal blog.

Here are some examples of Family History blogs that I have created in the past:

Spirit of Elijah – A primer on various aspects of genealogy and family history with some basic  lessons and lots of linked resources
http://myfamilyhistoryadventures.blogspot.co.nz/

Pile o’ Pendleys
Records of my father’s family
http://family-of-frank-and-jane.blogspot.co.nz/

Remembering Fred
My Husband’s Father’s Life Stories
http://fredashbybennett.blogspot.co.nz/

Krebs/Kurtz Connections
My Mother's family lines
http://krebs-kurtz.blogspot.com/

What's in it for me??

There are MANY blogs and websites that talk about the advantages of establishing a blog for business.  An easy Internet search can take you to those if that is what you are looking for.  There are also various different content management systems you can use for setting up your blog.  The two most popular are Blogger and Wordpress.  There is a terrific article giving a balanced comparison of the pros and cons of each which can be found HERE.

All instructions and information on this particular blog will refer ONLY to free blogs on Blogger with no intention of monetizing.  I have nothing against WordPress, and have used it with much success for projects in the past.  However, this set of instructions is intended for those who are new to blogging, and my experience is that blogger is a great free tool for novice bloggers.

If there is no possibility of payment, why would you want to put in all the time and effort to set up or maintain a blog?

Human beings are social creatures.  We are hard wired to want to connect with others.  Blogs are one way of doing that.  Obviously blogs are not the only way, or necessarily the "best" way to build community.  But for many people, they are a positive way to share.  They are simply one venue for sharing thoughts, feelings, information or questions.  They can be a great way to keep a record of progress toward a goal or to track a project you want to share with others.

It's not always about the bottom line.


                            


Some of the advantages of creating a blog include:

Unlike traditional publishing, a blog provides continual ability to correct or update

It allows feedback from readers

You can get to it from any computer or mobile device, so you can take your records with you when you travel without actually packing a single thing

Blogging is not for everybody.  But if it something you want to try - get brave and experiment. If you don't like the results you can always delete it. 

image from theedublogger.com 

One thing to keep in mind is that you can make your blog public or private, so whether you want to share your content with the whole world, just a select group of colleagues or friends, or keep it entirely to yourself is completely up to you.

Building Your Blog - Easy as 1-2-3

The whole point of blogging is that it allows you share information on the web with NO need to know code or any special experience in web design.  Advanced users may choose to customize, but when you are first starting out you can accomplish quite a lot by using the pre-set templates and gadgets. (More on what those are later).

STEP ONE:
To get started, simply go to Blogger.com and click on the "Create Your Blog" button.

STEP TWO:
That will take you to a screen where you get to choose the name and "URL" or address for your blog.

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator.  This is what someone will type into a search engine or the address bar of their computer or mobile device to find your blog.   This is informally referred to as your blog address.

Each URL can only point to ONE particular place on the World Wide Web.  So if your name is Sally and you want to name your blog "Sally's Fantastic Blog" you can certainly do that, but chances are that you may not be able to make that as your URL as it is quite possible that some other Sally already claimed that address.  (I just checked that particular example, and for right now that address seems to be available.  Still, it could change at any minute if someone else chooses that particular URL).  The point I want to make is that your URL must be unique, but your blog title does not.  Because of this it is not necessary that your title and your URL match.   Some people prefer that they do to make it easier for readers to remember your URL.  One thing to keep in mind is that you may want to change your title at some point, which is very easy to do.  Your URL, however, will stay the same as what you originally set it as.  So use some careful thought when planning what your URL will be.

For an example, one of the blogs I have written has to do with genealogy and family history.   The TITLE of the blog is "Spirit of Elijah", based on the scripture in the Bible that says:

"And he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the children to their fathers"        Malachi 4:6 .

However, when I set up that blog back in 2011, the name "Spirit of Elijah" was already in use.  So for my URL I chose http://myfamilyhistoryadventures.blogspot.com/   It is easy for me (or others) to remember and still conveys what the blog is about.

STEP THREE:
Next you will choose your template, which is the background color and format for your blog.  There are several different pre-set designs to choose from.  You can change this whenever you want without altering any of your content.  So experiment with a few different looks to see what appeals to you the best.

With just these three steps you now have a blog!  It does not have any content yet, but the basic structure is all there.  You will use the tabs in the upper right hand corner to begin adding posts  to your blog and to set features such as privacy settings and whether or not you want to allow other people to leave comments.

Scheduling your posts

The default for all blogs is that NEW content appears at the top, pushing the previously written material further down.  That way the freshest material is always on top.  For many things, this works great.   However, for a number of reasons, you may want to choose a different order for your blog posts.  For example, if you are wanting to put a book about your family on a blog it means the whole thing would be backwards with the last page showing up first and the first page being way down at the bottom.  That could be confusing for your readers.

One way to deal with this is to use the SCHEDULING function.   The other tactic you can use is SIDEBAR LINKS.

On this blog, I use both.

When you write a new post, it will automatically be assigned the date and time that you push "Publish".   But you can schedule each post to appear on any day or time you choose to assign it.  That way you can move them up or down, ahead of or behind your other posts.

To do this, from the editing page of your post you will click on the words "Published on" over on the right side of the screen near the top.

That will bring up a calendar where you can select what date and time you want to assign to your post.

You can use this scheduling feature to have posts appear as "new" or put new material at the very start.

Experiment with it and see how you might use this to give your blog whatever sense of order makes the most sense to you.

Setting up SIDEBARS

Many blogs have hot links to all sorts of different resources on the "Sidebar".

If you look at the far right side of this blog, you will see headings with links under them as follows:

Blog Basics
Getting Started
Adding Content

This is there so that readers of this blog can pick and choose which posts they want to read in what order.

Here is how that is done:

1)  From public front page of your blog choose whatever post you want to link to.  For example, let's say I wanted to make a link to the post about Privacy and Permissions.   You scroll down to the bottom of that post and click on the time stamp that appears at there:



When you click on that, it will put the URL for that specific post in the address bar:

                                       

Highlight and COPY that full URL.

2)   Next, click on the word DESIGN up in the top right corner of your blog.

From the Design page, click on the word LAYOUT from the menu on the left hand side

3) LAYOUT is the area where you can customize what appears in each section of your blog. Scroll down to the place where it says Sidebar and click on the words "Add a gadget".   NOTE:  Different patterns or "templates" may put the sidebar on the left rather than the right.  For the purpose of this example I am using THIS blog, so my sidebar is on the right.  Depending on which template you choose, your sidebar may be on the other side.

Understanding "Gadgets"  

A "Gadget" is a name for the HTML code that creates different features.   Common gadgets are things like "image" if you want to add a picture or "Link List" if you want to have a list of different links on your side bar.

A Link List can be used to keep an easy reference to resources from OTHER blogs or websites, or it can be used to create short cuts to specific posts from your own blog.
In this blog I have used link lists to make it easy for readers to see what posts are available and to choose to read them whenever they like simply by clicking on the sidebar titles.

These are created by selecting "Link List" from the Add a Gadget menu and then proceeding as follows.

4) When you click on the Link List option, you will see a configure box that you will fill out.

Every gadget MUST have a title.  Sometimes I want to add something like a photo or other feature without a title showing.  In that case, I put a single period in the title field.  There has to be SOMETHING there, but you can choose what it is.

In the box that says "New Site Name" you will type the words you want to show.  On this blog I have put the titles for the various blog posts I am linking to.    In other blogs I might put something more descriptive,  such as "Recipes"  or "Directions" or "Homework".   The names can be anything you want, but they should correspond to whatever you are linking to in order to be most useful.

In the box that says New Site URL you will PASTE the full web address or URL of whatever it is you want to link to.   In the example I began earlier I was describing linking to the Privacy and Permissions post,  so in that case I would past the full URL I had copied earlier which looks like this:
http://how2blogforbeginners.blogspot.com/2016/12/privacy-and-permissons.html

What will appear on the sidebar will be whatever name I put in the "New Site Name Box"  (In this case "Privacy and Permissions" and the URL points the blog where to go when those words are clicked.

You can make a single link or a long list of different links by continuing to repeat the process, adding new links to different URLS.

Take some time to explore the various gadgets you have to choose from and explore how you might use them to make your blog more content rich.

If this is unclear to you, here  is a video from YouTube showing how this is done.

How to write a post

When you begin writing content for your blog, you will do it in a text editor that has functions very similar to common word processors.  You can choose the font style and the size that your text will appear..You also can select color, bold, underline, italic and other features.

It will pay off if you take a little time to familiarize yourself with all the icon symbols at the top of your page when you begin writing your first post.  If you hover your cursor over each icon the name of that tool will appear .  From left to right, these include:

Undo, Redo, Font, Font Size, Format, Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough ,Text Color, Text Background Color, Add or Remove Link, Insert Image, Insert a video, Insert Special Characters, Insert Jump Breaks, Alignment, Numbered List, Bullet List, Quote, Remove formatting, Check Spelling.

To open up this text editor from the front page or public area of your blog, click on the words "New Post" to the right of your email at the top right corner of your blog.

If you are in the Dashboard or design page of your blog, click on Posts on top of the left hand menu, then click the words New Post in the orange box to the right of your blog title.

Depending on what template background color you use on your blog, it generally looks cleanest to use all black print or all white print.  Using too many special features in a post can make it appear busy or cluttered.  However, there are times when each of these tools may be helpful to emphasize a word or sentence. Experiment and see how they work.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough the value of regularly using the spell check function for all your posts.  Even if you are a skilled speller, all of us make mistakes from time to time.  It only takes a minute to check for errors after you are done writing BEFORE you click publish.  Cleaning up mistakes every single time is one of the habits that can help you have a cleaner appearing blog that people will enjoy reading.

Let your post titles shine
Every blog post you write should have a title.  It helps if the titles are short and clear, giving the reader a good idea of what your post is going to be about.  Most blog templates include an "archive" over on the sidebar which will give a list of the most recent blog titles.  Readers can review these to see what things you have written about previously that they may not see from the front screen if they have moved further down.
   
Scheduling blog posts
The normal way for blog posts to appear after you click Publish is for the most recent post to always be at the top of the blog, moving older posts down below.   You can, however choose to schedule blog posts to move them around.

Over on the right hand side of the design page you will see the orange words Post settings.  The second item under that is Schedule. When you click this you may click "Set date and time" from the drop down menu.  When this is clicked a calendar will appear with a time setting next to the date at the top of the calendar.   By choosing what date and what time you want your post published you can have something appear at a specified time in the future or you can move it back to an earlier spot on your blog.

Managing comments

One of the things many people like about reading and writing blogs is the ability to give and receive feedback.  Comments are short responses to let someone know what you thought about his or her writing..  When people leave comments on your blog it lets you know you have made a connection.

However, what you don't want is spam - someone using your blog to advertise their products or services or leaving some nonsense comments to lead your readers away to their own blog.

image from Trumpia.com

Some blog writers simply turn off their comments all together.  That is one option.  Something else you can do is enable comment moderation.  If you do this, every time someone leaves a comment on your blog it will first be sent to you privately in your email.  You decide there whether to allow the comment to be published on the blog or to block it.

For most cases on a new personal blog heavy comment traffic will not be a concern.  But if you do want to manage the comments on your blog, do the following:

Go to SETTINGS (left menu of dashboard or design page)
then click on Posts, comments and sharing.(beneath SETTINGS in that same left menu)

Next you can select from several options:

While comment moderation does give you absolute control, if you write a very popular blog that generates many comments it can be time consuming to manage them all.

Another option is to enable word verification.   This requires your readers to re-type a word they will be shown to prove to the blog management system that it is a real person wanting to add a comment.  This will screen out automated robots that can leave annoying spam but it won't screen out actual human beings who might make a remark you find rude or inappropriate.

You can always delete a comment somebody else posts if you don't want it showing on your blog.  However, most blogs will have some level of comment moderation to keep rude or inappropriate comments from ever being seen there at all.

For more information on comment moderation see:

Manage your blog's comments (Google)

How to enable comment moderation and filer spam in blogger (mybloggerlab.com)

Comment moderation in blogger (YouTube)