How to be a blogger - A 101 Guide

TIME.com has a story So You Want To Be A Blogger?


It’s easy to create your own blog — a good-looking one, with text, photos and links to other sites—in a flash, no technical know-how required. One good, basic service is Blogger.com, which is owned by Google. Blogger will host your site and give you a set of powerful, easy-to-use publishing tools for free. A caveat: Your blog’s URL will end in blogspot.com unless you do an advanced setup. Another good bet is MSN Spaces, also free. Yahoo’s 360° is still in limited beta-testing mode (you need to be invited by a current user to try it), but it should be open to the public later this summer, according to the company. There’s also LiveJournal, which is popular with teens, and TypePad, which offers more advanced features for $5 to $15 per month, depending on level of service. (Both are owned by Six Apart, creators of Movable Type, a publishing platform for more serious users.)


If you regularly read several different blogs, consider using a newsreader such as Bloglines or Kinja. These services let you view content from multiple websites, putting it all in one place so you don’t have to surf around. (There are also newsreader applications that you can download to your desktop. Check out Pluck.)