Week 4 –Learning how to blog - Choosing a Platform

As a complete blogging neophyte, I set about learning how to put a blog together. The most helpful resource was Blogging for Beginners, an excellent series of articles put together by Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.net. From it, I was able to answer some basic questions such as which blog platform to use and basic formatting. Following the information that I gathered from ProBlogger.net and surveys of the features of different blogging software, my initial plan was to use one of the free hosted blogging platforms, such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. Given my limitation of a lack of programming ability and a budget of zero, I liked the fact that the hosted platforms took care of the hosting, were easy to set up, simple to use, and were free. To get the view from the trenches, I consulted with a family friend who is half of the dynamic duo behind the wickedly acerbic commentary of dubious celebrity fashion sense, Go Fug Yourself. It turns out that their site had started on Blogger and then switched to Typepad for its better archiving ability. An informal survey by ProBlogger.net indicated that the Blogger.com was the most common of the free hosted platforms, so following the precept of the wisdom of crowds, I went with Blogger.com.