Creating A Blog On Your Site Easily

Creating a blog on your site isn't as daunting as it may initially sound.

There are several different ways that you can go about the process. All of them assume that you have some kind of web space hosting of your own - this is readily available nowadays for very little money, so don't panic.

The very cheapest web hosting is free but this often comes with adverts that pay the service hosting your site enough money for them to offer you the space for free.

If you expect your site to generate a reasonable amount of traffic then it's better to spend a few dollars a month on reliable web hosting.

Next up is to decide on your blog platform.

1. Use Blogger on your own site

Google's Blogger service gives you the option of using Blogger and its accompanying site or simply using Blogger to write your posts, which then get published on your own site.

It's easy to do this. Just go into your Blogger control panel, click the Settings tab and then select the Publishing tab. You'll see a link that says "Switch to custom domain". You'll then be given the option of buying a brand new domain for your blog or pointing it to a domain you already use. It's a simple matter of following the instructions on screen. Once you've done that, your Blogger blog will be posted to your own website instead of on Blogger.

2. Use Wordpress on your own site

This isn't quite as easy as Blogger, but it's pretty close. Most hosts offer a one click install of Wordpress. This installs the basic software on your web hosting space and then allows you to do whatever tweaks you need to make the blog your own rather than the "out of the box" settings. At the very least, you should turn on Akismet anti spam in your plug-ins. This involves getting an API key from Wordpress but that's a simple matter of clicking a few links and following the instructions that appear.

Once you've got Wordpress installed, check out a few tutorial sites to make sure that you've got your brand new blog set up as efficiently as possible so that the search engines can give it the publicity it deserves.

3. Choose a different blogging platform

Blogger and Wordpress are just two of the blog platforms available. There are lots more including systems such as Moveable Type amongst others.

That said, most people find that either the simplicity of Blogger or the customizable nature of Wordpress are more than adequate for their needs. Both platforms are very well supported and you're almost certain to be able to do exactly what you want to do with them.

Whichever you choose, you should make sure that you perform regular backups of your posts.

Apart from your writing, the template you choose for your new blog is the biggest statement you can make to the outside world. Both Blogger and Wordpress come with lots of templates or you can have your own template custom designed if you want to really stand out from the crowd.