Blogger is Google’s free tool for creating blogs. It can be found on the web at http://www.blogger.com. Previous versions of Blogger were heavily branded with the Blogger logo, but the latest version is flexible and unbranded so you can use it to create and promote blogs without a budget.
The main advantage to using Blogger is that Blogger is completely free, including hosting and analytics. If you choose to display ads, you share in the profits.
Getting Started With Blogger
You can use blogs for everything from updating your friends and family about your life, giving your own advice column, discussing your political views, or relating your experience in a topic of interest. You can host blogs with multiple contributors, or you can run your own solo show. You can even use Blogger to make your own podcast feeds.
Although there are fancier blog tools out there, the mixture of cost (free) and flexibility makes Blogger a fantastic option. The one note of caution is that Google has not put as much effort into maintaining Blogger as they have into building new services. That means there's a chance Blogger service could end. Historically Google has provided paths to porting content to some other platform when this happens, so chances are good you could migrate to WordPress or another platform should Google decide to end Blogger.
Setting Up Your Blog
Setting up a Blogger account takes three easy steps.
Create an account, name your blog, and choose a template. You can host multiple blogs with the same account name, so you only need to do that part once. This way you could separate your professional blog about your business from your personal blog about dogs, for instance.
Hosting Your Blog
Blogger will host your blog for free on
blogspot.com.
You can use a default Blogger URL, you can use your own existing domain, or you can buy a domain through Google Domains as you set up a new blog. The advantage to using Google's hosting services is that they scale incredibly well so you won't have to worry about your blog crashing if it becomes popular.
Posting
Once your blog is set up, Blogger has a basic
WYSIWYG editor. (What you see is what you get). You can also toggle to a plain HTML view if you prefer. You can embed most media types, but, like most blog platforms, JavaScript is restricted.
If you need more formatting options, you could also use Google Docs to post to your Blogger blog.
Email Your Posts
You can optionally configure Blogger with a secret email address, so you can email your posts to your blog.
Pictures
Blogger will let you upload pictures from your desktop and post them to your blog. Just drag and drop them from your desktop into your post as you're writing it. You can also use Google Photos to embed pictures, although as of this writing that's still labeled as "Picasa Web Albums" after the now-discontinued service Google Photos replaced.
YouTube videos can also be embedded blog posts, of course.
Appearance
Blogger offers several default templates, but you can also upload your own template from multiple free and premium sources.
You can add and manipulate gadgets (the Blogger equivalent of WordPress widgets) to further customize your blog.
Social Promotion
Blogger is compatible with most social sharing, like Facebook and Pinterest, and you can automatically promote your posts on Google+.
Templates
You initially pick one of several templates for Blogger. You can switch to a new template at any point. The template controls the look and feel of your blog, as well as the links on the side.
You can also customize and create your own template, although this requires more advanced knowledge of CSS and web design. There are many sites and individuals who also offer Blogger templates free for personal use.
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