I have four blogs so I've been down this road a few times. You want to create a blog. You have an idea of what kind of content you'll put on it (if you are a photographer it typically would be photos from your recent shoots and specials). Now you are ready to go.
First, you'll need to decide how you are going to create your blog. There are many online services that will manage your blog for you. I use Typepad and love it. There are lots of resources for folks that use Typepad, and lots of add-ins because it is so popular. Blogger is another online blogging service.
Next, you'll need to register, and create your first blog. Consider the name of your blog too. Many photographer's just add blog to the end of their studio name: Ecor Rouge Photography Blog.
The next steps are going to be specific to Typepad but can probably be done with other services as well.
You can consider what the URL for your blog will be. If you use typepad you can use a typepad subdomain and just link to it from your website but then the URL will have typepad.com in it. Another option is to use domain mapping to have a sub-domain point to your typepad account. For example, http://blog.ecorrouge.com is mapped to my typepad address http://mamacat.typepad.com/ecorrouge. Which one do you think looks more professional? Ready to map your domain? Check out this help file from Typepad for step by step instructions. Blogger also lets you use a custom domain name, even if you host with blogspot. It can take a day or two for your site to be available with your new domain name so keep that in mind when you set this up.
In typepad, once your DNS changes have taken effect (the changes that let you point your URL to the typepad address), you still need to activate your blog and republish it so that the site will all be addressed from the URL you set up.
Tired already? I am, but there is still a bunch to do.
While you are waiting for your DNS changes to take effect (if you've done that), you'll have some time to choose the layout, content, and design of your blog. Typepad makes it pretty easy to do.
Log into your Typepad account. Click on the "Weblogs" Tab, then click on the name of the weblog you would like to edit. Then you can click on the "Design" tab to get to the page that let you choose what you'd like to edit about the design of your blog. First, I recommend clicking on the "Change Layout" link to pick your layout since it will make a difference as you setup your design. Click on "Change Theme" next if you'd like to pick the theme for your blog. They have a number of nice pre-defined themes that are great starting points to get a site up fast. If you'd like to setup your blog to coordinate with your website design, you'll probably want to pick the custom theme. You can create your own header banner, or just use a text header from the system. And you can pick your colors, fonts, and sizes for the elements of your blog which is great for customizing it!
You'll want to republish after you've made your design changes to get it ready for your content.
Next Step....laying out your content!
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