Wayne Hedlund

Create A Simple Blog With Blogger

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Wayne Hedlund

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Last week I posted two articles about creating a ministry blog to build momentum and create unity. Here are those two posts for your reference:

In this post I will share the first few steps for creating your ministry blog using Google’s Blogger.

CREATE A GOOGLE ACCOUNT

To start, you must create (for free) or login to your Google account. You can do that by browsing to www.blogger.com. If you do not have a Google account, click on the ‘Get Started’ button on that page.

CREATE YOUR FIRST BLOG
After logging in for the first time you will see a button prompting you to create your first blog. After selecting that button you will then be prompted to name your blog as well as give it a web address.
  • Name Your Blog
    You can name your blog whatever you want. Obviously, the more descriptive and interesting your name, the better. For example, if you are creating a blog for church volunteers in your guest or host ministry, you might name the blog: FCC First Impressions (with FCC being the name of your church). Note: you can change the name at any time.
  • Give Your Blog a Web Address
    You will also see a place to give your blog a web address. This is the address you will eventually give to everyone to find your ministry blog. Try to make the address simple and easy to remember. For instance, using the above example you might try “fccimpressions”. Blogger will tell you if the address of your choice is available. Note: you can also change the address in the future. Additionally, you may want to choose to buy your own web domain later on. In that case, you pick your own web address and are not constrained to stick with the .blogspot.com extension at the end.

SELECT THE SIMPLE BLOG TEMPLATE
You will also be required to select a template for your blog. To be honest, this isn’t the place or time to finalize what template you really want. So just pick the ‘Simple’ template for now. You can adjust the look of your blog later. Note: do not select the ‘Dynamic’ template.
CREATE A TEMPORARY POST
The next step I recommend is to create your first post. You will DELETE this post later so the content and formatting are not very important. The reason I recommend creating a post, though, is to help you see what your blog will look like with information applied. Write out two or three paragraphs of text and click the “Publish” button. Remember, you haven’t created a blog design yet, so don’t worry if the blog doesn’t look nice yet!
UNDERSTAND THE BLOGGER INTERFACE
Let me take a moment to help you understand the links in your blogger interface. Refer to this image and then see my explanations after. If your blogger interface does not look like this, then you may have ti first click the link at the top right of your screen that says “Try the updated blogger interface”. Or if you are already viewing your blog, click the ‘Design’ link in the top right of your screen.
Here is a quick run-down of each of these sections. You may click on each one to see the content associated with them.
Overview: This will give you some basic statistics on your blog as well as some helpful links (in the Blogger Guide section) to help you be a successful blogger.

Posts: This is where you can edit or delete past posts.

Pages: This is an advanced feature you may want to take advantage of in the future. It allows you to have multiple ‘pages’ on your blog. As an example, check out the various pages at the top of my blog at www.transformingleader.org. They include ‘about me‘, ‘services‘, ‘reading lists‘, etc.

Comments: If your readers comment a lot on various posts, this is where you will go to manage comment options and individual comments.

Stats: You can find out details about how many people are viewing different posts and when in this section.

Earnings: This is for professional bloggers and probably not something you need to worry about right now.

Layout: This is where you will adjust what else is on your blog page besides blog posts. For example, I have several elements in the layout of www.transformingleader.org, like subscription buttons, a general greeting, a search bar, the top 5 posts of the week, etc.

Template: This is where you will determine what your blog will look like. There are numerous template options to pick from.

Settings: This section will allow you to make various changes and tweaks to your blog to make it most like what you want it to be like. In particular, you can add authors in this section. For example, if you would like a volunteer or another staff person to be able to post to your blog, you can add their email address here and they will be able to create their own Google account and post to your blog.

ADJUST THE LAYOUT
Next you should spend time on your blog’s layout. This includes the various elements on the right side of your first blog. By selecting the ‘edit’ links next to each element you can adjust or remove them. To get you started, I recommend you remove ALL of the elements preinstalled except for ‘Blog Archive’. Next, I suggest you add each of the below elements (or Gadgets) to the right bar.  To add a Gadget, simply select the ‘Add a Gadget’ link. Drag and drop each element to your desired location after you have created each one. I recommend the following order:

  • HTML/Javascript (Welcome
    This will allow you to create your own text. I recommend a short greeting explaining the purpose of your blog. As an example, read the short greeting entitled ‘Welcome to my Blog!’ here at www.transformingleader.org.
  • Follow By Email
    This is very important. It will allow your primary audience to ‘sign-up’ for email updates whenever you create a new blog post.
  • Subscription Links
    Again, very important. This will give your more tech-savvy audience options to subscribe to your blog using a blog reader on their computer or phone.
  • Search Box
    Add the search box so that readers can search through past blog entries using key words. I suggest you only check the first check box. This will keep your readers on your blog when searching.
  • Labels
    Your blog will be much more useful if you begin using labels right from the start. You can always adjust labels for each blog later. For example, you might label upcoming event posts as ‘Events’, devotional thoughts as ‘Inspirational’, and particular topics as most appropriate, like ‘Leadership’, ‘First Impression’, etc. I suggest you uncheck the ‘Show # of posts’ checkbox.
  • Blog Archives
    This section should already be present. It allows your readers to go back and find blogs by date.

ADJUST THE TEMPLATE (DESIGN)
Finally, you will want to tweak the design of your ministry blog. You will do this by selecting the ‘Template’ link in your left toolbar. You will see a list of various blog designs and may select different ones to see how they look to you. IMPORTANT: First focus on everything except the background image. In selecting your template you’re looking for things like, “Is the text easy to read?”; “Do I like the design?”; etc. You can CHANGE the actual background image whenever you want.
To change the background image, simply select the ‘Customize’ button after you have find your favorite template. Next, select the ‘Background’ link and then choose the background image and color scheme of your choice. When finished, select the “Apply to Blog” button at the top right of the screen.
BEGIN CREATING POSTS
You will learn best by doing. Begin creating posts and text by clicking the ‘New Post’ button. Always remember to create a Title for your post and 1 or 2 Labels for your post. By experimenting, you will eventually be able to learn how to add and adjust images, format text, etc. As you grow comfortable with creating posts, you will discover advanced features and options as well. For instance, it’s very easy to embed code (like for a video) into your blog by using the HTML button. Don’t forget that you can always delete old posts. You may also create as many Drafts as you want without actually publishing them.

FINAL COMMENTS

There is no way that I could explain all of the details of creating and managing a blog in one post. I probably won’t follow up with many other explanations either, since this is not the primary purpose of this blog. However, I think this article will at the very least get you started. I suggest you take your time and slowly get comfortable using Blogger by experimenting and through trial and error. You will also find some great tutorials and more help in Blogger’s Getting Started Guide. Happy blogging!

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