Chris Pirillo's biggest fan tells you how to start your own online journal,

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  1. Register with Blogger.com
    Create a user name, password, and title for your blog. If you really want to attract viewers, use a catchy name besides "John Doe's blog." Some examples of good names are "Blog, blog, baby," "Code Monkey," and "Canadian Gnomedexers."

  2. Describe the blog
    Give a brief description of your blog. Make it inviting for people scouring the Web for new reads.

  3. Public vs. private
    Making your blog public lets anyone searching for a blog find yours. If you just want a blog to vent about your tyrant boss, then you might want to choose private.

  4. Hosting choices

    • Use a free hosting service. At Blogger.com you can opt to go with blogspot, a server service designed for Blogger. Your blog's address will be whatever.blogspot.com. You can also use a service like GeoCities or Angelfire.
    • Use FTP to upload the blog to the personal site offered by your ISP or the site you purchased independently.
    • If you can't live without your blog and want to add cool features like a webcam so that we can all see your raging beauty or add pictures for a design you have tossing around your head, try my favorite blogging host, Blogomania. It is blog-friendly, has a wide range of hosting plans, and will even help you with Movable Type if you are itching to try that out.


  5. Pick a template
    Choose from tons of templates on the site or do a Google search for blogging templates. Click the radio button for the template you want to test. Click the "use this" button and watch Blogger do it all for you. Don't worry, you can always go back and change it later.

  6. Tweak your template
    If you know a little bit of HTML, you can tweak your template with links, a calendar, or add-ons from Bravenet such as counters and comments. Click the template menu to go to the screen with the actual HTML code and get started.

  7. Tour the control panel
    You will now be brought to the screen that's the center of your blogging world, the control panel.

    Go to the Settings menu at the top of the page. You have choices here (choices are good).
    • How many posts do you want on a page? The default is seven days, but you can change that to however many posts/days you want.
    • Change the order the posts are shown.
    • Don't forget to change the time to your time zone.
    • Click "save changes" to get back to the control panel.


  8. Start writing
    You'll be posting in the empty white space on the page. I always use bold tags (e.g. Insert title here) to create my entry title, but do whatever inspires you.

    Write a short entry to get a feel for it and hit the post/publish button when you're done. Hit "view web page" to see your words of wisdom.



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