You First Need to Have an Account with Google

Blogger.com provides FREE software to create blog postings, and Blogspot.com provides FREE hosting for your blog.  Both of these companies are owned by Google, and you need to have a FREE account with Google to create your login at Blogger.com.

If you have an account with Google, skip the rest of this section and go on to the next section.

If you don't have an account with Google, go to http://www.google.com/ and click on the "Sign in" link in the upper right of the window:

Scroll down until you see the link "Create an account now" - and click on this link:

Enter all of the information that is requested. The e-mail address that you enter and the new password that you select will be used to login to your Google account.  Finally click on the button "I accept.  Create my account."

Now that you have created a Google account, you can go on to the next section.

Create Your Blog at Blogger.com

This section assumes that you have an account with Google.  Go to the Blogger.com website at http://www.blogger.com/ and enter your login information - then click on the "Sign In" button:

You will view the Blogger Dashboard.  If you have any existing blogs in Blogger.com, you will be able to access them from the Blogger Dashboard.  Assuming that you don't yet have a blog, click on the "Create a Blog" link:

Next, you will be asked to name your blog and select a URL (web address) where you want to publish your blog.  You should select a name that will describe the focus of your blog, as well as a name that is unique.  In this example, the name "burks-on-learning" was selected - and the blog will be published at:

http://burks-on-learning.blogspot.com/

Click on the "Check Availability" link to see if this URL is available.  Finally, click on the "Continue" arrow to go on to the next step.

You next will be asked to choose a template for your blog.  Don't worry, if you don't like the way that it looks when it is published, you can go back and select a different template.  After you have selected a template, click on the "Continue" arrow to go on to the next step.

At this point, you will see that your blog has been created - and you now are ready to go on and make your first blog posting.  Simply click on the "Start Posting" arrow to continue.

You will view the on-screen WYSIWYG editor in Blogger.  Enter a title for your blog posting, then type in the text of your posting (you also can add images, hyperlinks, etc.).  Finally, when you have completed your blog posting, click on the "Publish Post" button to publish your blog posting to your account at Blogspot.com:

You will receive a message that your blog post was published successfully.  You can can click on the "View Blog" link to view your blog posting (it will be published at Blogspot.com):

At this point, you are done!  Give yourself a pat on the back!

As part of this workshop at Louisiana Tech, we will be experimenting with a wiki.  You might want to add a link to your new blog on the homepage of the wiki:

http://louisianatech.pbwiki.com/

When you want to make a new blog posting, simply go back to Blogger.com and login.  You will view your Blogger Dashboard.  Click on the "New Post" link to bring up the editor (and follow the steps outlined above):

At some point, you can go back to your Blogger Dashboard and edit your profile.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

last updated 17 October 2007