An Introduction to Blogs
Before I ever began writing my blogs, I was reading them. You can find interesting, informative, instructive, fun, newsworthy or even controversial blogs everywhere on the Internet; just use a search engine such as Google’s new BlogSearch or similar search engine, (more below about these), and begin reading. When you find blogs you like, you can place them on a blogroll, in a list that you can even post on your own blog. I use a free Blogrolling account for this, and I’ve placed a bit of code into the template of my blog to display the blogroll in a sidebar. The blogroll is, in my opinion, better than simply having bookmarks for various blogs in a folder. For one thing, if I am away from my own computer and for some reason I can’t access my bookmarks, my blogroll will likely still be available (unless of course the blogrolling site is down.) Plus, clicking an easily visible hyperlink for a blog is quicker than rummaging through folders looking for a link. Also, I began viewing the source code of blogs I enjoyed, to see how the coding was written and how features such as drop-down menus were implemented. If you have Internet Explorer, go to View in the menu bar, and choose Source. This will open the source code so that you can see it and study it. I find it helpful to use Mozilla’s Firefox browser and its “View Source With” extension, (setup to use my favorite text editor for viewing the code) because I can keep the blog open in one tab and open another tab for viewing source code; it is a matter of a mouse-click or two to switch back and forth between the tabs. This is how I learned to read Blogger’s source code, and I used a text editor to copy and work with code I wanted to use, to learn how it worked.

Getting Started with Blogger: Create Your Blog
You have decided you want a blog. This is easy to do with Blogger:
Step 1: Go to http://www.blogger.com/start, and click on the “create your blog now” arrow. The first step is to create a Blogger account. Here you will choose your user name, set your password, (you will need them each time you log in to Blogger.com, although you can check the “Remember Me” box to set a cookie for your log in if you like) and choose a display name for your new blog’s signature line. Just fill in the requested information (including a valid e mail address) in the text boxes, then read and accept the Terms of Service. Click the Continue arrow to proceed.

Step 2. Choose a title for your blog, and enter the URL (this may be a form of your blog title. Example: One of my blogs is titled “Angelsong’s Firefox Index”. The URL I chose is http://angelsongsfxindex.blogspot.com, which is the actual web address for the blog. Complete the word verification by typing the text you see into the text box. Click the Continue arrow to go to the final step.

Step 3: Choose a template for your blog. There are a number of templates available on Blogger; choose any one you like. (You can change your template later, if you like.)
When your blog is created, you can begin posting right away, or you can create a profile for yourself and tweak your blog’s settings first. You will see an edit window where you will type your blog entry; provide a title for your first post, and write whatever you like. You can create as many blogs as you like, and you can have blogs for different purposes. It’s completely up to you. That is one of the best things about blogs and blogging: The blogger is in charge.