Now that you have created your Google account and logged into blogger, I guess the next step is to start creating your blog(s). During the creation process, there are two critical questions you will need to answer

The title of your blog is a word or very short phrase that tells someone what your blog is all about. If I am creating a personal blog to share information with my classmates, I can choose “Uncle Che and Classmates”. If I am creating a blog to help newbies with PC Tips, I can decide to use a “PC 101” or “PC Tips for Newbies”.

From the title of your blog, one should be able to have a general idea of what your blog is all about. If what you choose as title does not sound very clear but is your heart’s desire, no problem. Just make sure later on (when choosing your blog options) you enter a more explanatory tagline, or blog description. Your blog title and description should contain as many keyword related to your blog as possible. This is good for search engine optimizaytion.

The next issue on creating a new blog is choosing a url for your blog. If you are using a free subdomain from blogger, then your blog’s url will be of the nature yourblog.blogspot.com make sure the name you choose is short, easy to remember, and reflects the content of your blog. In future, you can “upgrade” by buying your own custom domain (a full domain name without the .blogspot on it, ie, yourblog.com). This blog you are reading right now had az-blogging-tips.blogspot.com as the address, which I later changed to my own custom domain azblogging.com.

At times, your chosen domain may not be available. This can be a bit frustrating, believe me, but you have to go for a second or third choice. Keep trying other options and I bet you will find a domain even better than the one you initially planed for.

If you have decided on which title and address you want to use for your blog, then this is the right time to sign into blogger and click on the “Create a Blog” Link. After clicking on that link, the next page will demand for your blog’s title, address and a verification code. Enter the blog title and address you decided on and validate. If are informed that the address is not available, then it must have been taken by another blogger and allocated to another blog. Just keep trying various alternatives. You can use dashes ( - ) if possible (some claim although they are difficult to pronounce in addresses, they are good for search engine optimization). When you finally have an address that is available and validate the creation process, you can then proceed to choosing a theme (template or design) for your blog. After choosing a design, scroll down and validate your choice. Your blog is now created and ready for posting.

Before you start posting, however, there is still some work to do. The default options of your blog are very OK, but since humans have varying tastes, you will need to check them out and make adjustments. I can bet that you won’t like the design of your blog. All the default designs of blogger are very good, but there are far better ones out there that you can download and install on your blog free of charge.

Before we go into any of the above, maybe you will like to use a custom domain for your blogger blog. On the next post, we shall be talking about that. A domain costs averagely $10 per year. I will greatly advise you to use it for your blog. I have a blog that’s still on a free subdomain (http://uncleche.blogspot.com) but I have special reasons for keeping that one like that. I will upgrade to uncleche.com about a year from now. That one is strictly experimental, trust me!