How-To-Blog: Intro

A lot of people have asked me about tips or tricks or where I blog, how to get hosting, how to set up your own name, design, ect. They get floored when I tell them I do it myself (with a little help from my friends  - I'll explain what that means later). Anyways, welcome to my How-To-Blog series a.k.a Blogging 101.

Your blog going to be a sort of step-by-step process. You can the following in any order and I highly recommend brain storming on all of these things BEFORE executing them. Staying organized is key to blogging. With that being said, here is how the posts will go:

1. Blog - You'll need a platform to blog. Then you'll need to decide if you want it to be free (Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger, Livejournal) or Paid. Taking it even a step further you may want a domain name and/or hosting.
2.  Layout - You don't want plain black and white page. You'll need some sort of design that reflects you and your blog. Think of it as clothes for your blog. You don't go outside naked so you don't want your blog to be naked either. Unless you're into that kind of thing.
3. Purpose - What is your goal for the blog? Why are you blogging?
4. Content - You need to fill your blog. After all isn't that the whole point of having one? Your content should be directly relating to your purpose and leave your visitors with a reason to come back. The frequency is up to you but at least once a month. 
5. Posts - Further expansion on how to post your content in a pleasant manner so people will come back and how to get your content to stand out among the throngs of blogs out there.

I'm going to be doing a multi-part series of blogs on how to create your own blog. I know everyone does these and there is a plethora of how-to's out there this will be a fun way for you to see how I got my start so it is informational too.

I started out doing web design when I was 11. My dad had just died right after we got our first computer and after my mom had her breakdown and was hospitalized and I had to take care of myself I didn't really get a chance to grieve the loss. What I realize now (thanks Psych major) was that I used my art to express myself. It wasn't enough but it helped. I was obsessed with the neopets website and these little "dolls" that users put in their shops. I wanted my own "doll website."
Essentially all they are made up of is kind of like a virtual paper doll:

Anyways, I realized I needed to learn how to make those so essentially I just copied the work of other websites until I learned how to do it on my own, changed it to suit my needs and with a little help from a website called Lissa Explains It All (it still has its original layout from when I first visited in 1999) I learned basic HTML and CSS. Then I got older and I moved onto wanting a personal blog, a domain name and to make my own layouts. So I did. I bought "stolen-breath.net" because I didn't want a dot com and "stolen breath" came from a Distillers song called "I Am a Revenant" and the line goes "We are the revenants/ Whoa, we will rise up from the dead/We become the living/ We've come back to reclaim our stolen breath."  I wanted to be cool and all the "kids" at the time were getting their domain name inspiration from songs. Then they would have song lyrics and stuff written on their layouts. Sometimes the layouts would have a band on them or some type of actor/model/musician for each new layout and call it a version of their websites. They installed cutenews or b2 as a blogging platform and they had emoticons and buttons, they also offered up content. I'll get to that next. Not too much unlike what I have now. Except now I have my name in the title with a nick name that will take far too long to explain but it has stuck and it is way more simplistic than I used to be.

Check back next week for the next installment where I will go into depth on physically manifesting your blog from some ideas on paper (or in Notepad) to a viable webpage and in later installments go over all 4 of the aforementioned steps above. See you next week!