Anyone Can Blog, so Don't Panic

These suggestions come mostly from Sandra Fish, a journalist and professor and a friend from the Journalism & Women Symposium:

How to Blog:

1. Identify some blogs that you like and figure out what it is you like, their style and look, the tone of the writing, the content (although some of that will not be your choice while you are blogging for class.) figure out what software is "powering" the sites you like. This is usually written on the blog somewhere or you'll see an icon before the URL in the address line of your browser.

(For those of you who don't know where to look to identify blogs you like, start here with this list of blog search engines: http://websearch.about.com/od/internetresearch/a/newsblog.htm)


2. Here're too free blogging software sites. If any of you have had good experience with free software, comment here and let the rest of the class know.

*Blogger http://www.blogger.com is part of the Google empire. It's easy to set up and easy to upload photos and videos to.

*WordPress http://wordpress.org is versitle and may be the best choice if you are planning to write long post. It allows you to file the tops of these post onto a front page and then moves readers to "inside" pages to reach the rest. It has plug-ins too, for the more advanced bloggers.

Once you've chosen your software, follow the installation directions you'll find in them. This is easy. Play with different "themes" which are the layouts or templates available for blog.

Create a title for your blog and include your photo and contact information as part of the design.

Let me know your address when you have set up your publishing empire.