How to Set up a Blog and Design it to Look Exceptional

So you probably have heard a lot about the blogging craze everywhere. These days, very few people don't have blogs. People have blogs for various reasons. To name a few: to express themselves, to give advice and counseling about certain topics, to raise awareness about a certain issue, to make money etc. Yes you heard that right, you can make some money from blogs and a lot of people are doing it!

The first step towards starting a blog is setting up the blog by itself. You can set up a blog with word press, which is the most widespread blog site, or blog spot or blogger, which both are owned by Google. There are many other smaller blogging websites, but the 3 I just mentioned are the most widely spread. Setting up the blog is easy and not that hard. It could be challenging for people who never dealt with the internet and computers before, but most blog sites have easy to follow instructions and guides. I think that no matter how hard setting up a blog could be for someone, it is really worth it.

There are 2 options when it comes to setting up a blog. One is to set it up to be hosted by the blog own server or to be hosted by the server you are using. The only difference is that if the blog is hosted by your own server, you have more freedom in terms of customizing the blog design and look. In addition, if you host the blog and connect it with a link to your website, it will help in search engine rankings.

Here are the steps you have to follow to set up the blog to be hosted by the blog own server:-

1- Go to the blog site you want to set up the blog with.

2- Sign up and assign a user name and a password.

3- Chose the theme you like. These themes are ready made for you and there are so many to suit your taste and the subject of your blog. You can change the theme at any time.

4- Choose the header. The header is the picture in the theme. You can insert your picture there or any picture relevant to your blog topic.

5- Choose a title for the blog. This is the headline of your blog. Make it short and to the point.

6- Set up the description of the blog. Be brief, ad use 10 to 20 words to describe what you blog is all about.

7- Choose your keywords or tags. These are the keywords that people will find your blog with when they do a keyword search. Choose max 10 highly targeted keywords that are relevant to your blog's topic.

If you want to set up the blog to be hosted by your own server, here are the steps:-

1- Go to the c-panel of your hosting account.

2- Most hosting accounts these days have blog setups with few clicks of the mouse. It is usually a button there that says quick blog setup or something close to that.

3- Click it and it will ask you for the blog name, user name, and password.

4- After setting up the blog, you can customize its design and look by using your own templates. You can find free blog templates online or you can buy one for better quality.

5- Using an FTP client, upload the template to the themes folder of your blog in the same server you installed the blog in.

6- Go to your blog admin board in the blog website. Change the theme of the blog to the one you just uploaded.

7- While you still there in the admin board, set up the title, description and keywords of your blog.

By time, you will notice that you are getting used to modifying and playing with the design of your blog. It will be like your painting, everyday you make more improvements and add artistic details here and there and this is very good as the more you perfect your blog, the better it will look and attract readers. My advice is, if you want to make a strong entry into the blogging world, learn some HTML and how to use an editor to modify it and play with the design. Believe me, it isn't rocket science! I recommend Microsoft Front Page as it is like using a word editor, but with a HTML twist. If you feel that you are getting more confident, try Adobe Dream Weaver as a lot of website designers use it to build very good looking and professional websites with the minimum possible knowledge of code.

Yousef is an expert writer in business and money making issues. His insights and clear, informative style has attracted a lot of attention lately. To subscribe to his free newsletter send a blank email to ibm-newsletter@aweber.com Check Yousef's website http://www.internet-business-and-money.com

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