Start Blogging in Five Minutes and Five Steps

How to start a simple blog for your church or mission field. Follow the first five steps to get a basic blog up and running, and then customize it with steps six through ten.

1. Go to http://www.blogger.com where you will see "Create a blog. It's free", Click on "Get started".

2. Blogger and Google are connected. You may already have a Google account you use for Gmail, Groups, or iGoogle. If not, create one now.

3. Name your blog, and choose the URL you want connected with your blogger blog. Keep hitting "Check Availability" to see if your desired URL is already taken. For this blog, I originally used "http://ifbkjv.blogspot.com. This URL is tied in with "blogspot", so it is free. Later, you can upgrade to a custom url for about $10.00. I did upgrade to "http://IFBKJV.com", however, it is not necessary. Most people will not find your blog by typing in a URL at all. Instead, they will simply search for you or your ministry online, and get to your blog via the results. Blogger submits your blog to the search engines and spiders that crawl the web looking for key words like your names or ministry automatically, unless you tell them not to. More on this later.

4. Choose a starter template. This is the best way to have your blog online in a matter of minutes. Everything is predesigned, and you just have to choose which design you like the look of. You do not need to know any html code at all! Pick the style of page and colors you like. They start you with eight choices, but I will show you how to find many more later on in the process, so just pick one for now.

5. Your blog has been created! Click on "Start blogging". You will be taken to a place where you can make your first post. It is very much like posting a note on Facebook. You can delete and edit it later. Enter a title, and a few sentences. Note how you can change the font size and color, add pictures/images from your computer, etc. When you have your first post how you like it, hit "Publish Post".

6. You should see a page with the words "Your blog post published successfully!" Above that, you will see some tabs, and a link that reads "View Blog". Click that link to see what your new blog looks like. You will see your new post, and a number of things on the sidebar such as how many followers you have, an archives of all the posts you have made, and your "about me" info. Let's customize what you want to be shown here.

• a. Scroll to the very tip top of the page, and on the navbar you should see your email address (other people will not see your email on their computers), "new post", "design", and "sign out". The navbar is how you get around to control your blog. Click on "design".

• b. On the design page, you will see boxes. A lot of these boxes and be dragged around the page and moved to new positions. We are going to focus on the "Add a Gadget" section. Blogger has automatically started you with a few gadgets. You can click on the "edit" link on each of them to change how they work, or delete them. Click on "Add a Gadget" to see hundreds of gadgets you can add. Blogger makes some of them (the "Basics", and some of them are made by others and include ads. I use ones made by blogger, or ones I have made using the "html/javascript" gadget. Each one has a description, and can be deleted if you don't like it.

7. A word on those tabs. If you are still in "Design", you will see the tab for "Design" is clicked. The first two other tabs are "Posting", where you will make new posts, edit old posts, or delete posts; and "Comments" where you can quickly find and post or delete what has been said about your blog posts.

8. Let's look at the tab called "Settings". Under settings you have a whole new row of more tabs! Here you can change your basic settings, your publishing settings, your comments settings where you can decide who can comment on your posts, and if you have to okay their comments before they go on your blog. This is a good idea if you start getting spam comments on your blog, but until your blog gets noticed by the search engines, no one knows it exists yet, so you will probably be fine for at least a few weeks.

9. While we are in "Settings", click on basic, and you will see that you can change the title of your blog, add a description, and two important items are here: "Add your blog to our listings?" and "Let search engines find your blog?" These should both be checked "YES", unless you do not want your blog to be found by anyone.

10. Finally, If you want to change the look and colors of your blog, go back to the "Design" tab. This is really very easy once you get the hang of it, and you could change it every week! I usually change mine once a year, or at least tweak it so it looks fresh and interesting.

• a. Now that you are in the "Design" area again, click on the link "Template Designer".

• b. Play around with all the new templates, choices within the templates, backgrounds, and colors, etc. This can get as complex or stay as simple as you like. No changes will be made to your blog until you hit that "Apply to Blog" bottom, so don't worry about messing anything up! If you create something hideous, just close the browser page, and your blog will not have been changed at all. Changes you make will also be immediately visible to you on the bottom of the page, so you can really see what your choices will look like if you do choose to hit the "Apply to Blog" button.

Well, there you have it. How to have a customized free blog in ten steps. Blogger can be a beneficial way to share your ministry, needs, sermons, progress, etc. with the world at no cost, in an accessible, well known and trusted, ad-free way.