Publishing a Blog with Blogger: Visual QuickProject Guide

If you want to start blogging fast, but don’t want to get sidetracked by the details, then you need a Visual QuickProject Guide!

Writing in a journal is all well and good, but when you're ready to share your musings with the world (and you think the world is ready to receive them!), a blog is the way to go. For just $12.99, this compact guide shows you how! Using big, bold full-color pictures and streamlined instructions, it covers just the need-to-know essentials that will get you blogging with leading free blog software--Google’s Blogger--in a matter of minutes. Best-selling author Elizabeth Castro takes you through each step of the blogging process--from acquainting you with the interface to setting up your blog, creating your profile, posting email, adding pictures and audio, and more. Occasional sidebars and tips point out other useful blogging tips and tricks.

This book is very visual, lots of fun, and easy to read and understand---in short, perfect for the beginning blogger. It is the exact opposite of a reference manual, and thus is very hands on. Note that this book is only for people who want to use Blogger, which is free, to publish their blog. If you don't know what you want to publish your blog with, you like the "free" part, and you're not a business, you probably will be very, very happy with Blogger. So this would definitely be the book for you.

It is only 127 pages, so it's not overwhelming to read. You can easily go through it over a weekend and get your blog up and running. If you have HTML or XHTML experience, you'll find lots of good things, too, so slightly more experienced bloggers may still pick up a few tips, like how to change their header on a template or how to syndicate their blog.

If you are a geek, you won't need this book. You'll just log onto Blogger and think it's "intuitive" and be able to do everything. However, if you're like me and get stuck a lot, even with so-called "intuitive" software, you'll love this book.

Even though this book was published in 2005, and yes, Blogger is in a new version, I haven't found any problems applying what is in the book. None at all. The new version of Blogger just does more things for you; everything in the book still needs to be done one way or another. So it's doesn't make the book dated as far as it's utility goes. If you're really a beginner (which is who this book is for) you might not even notice.

There are pictures throughout of what the screens look like, so instead of TELLING you what to do and letting you figure it out, the book SHOWS you what to do and you just follow along. It keeps things as simple as possible.

Highly recommended for beginning bloggers.

I really thought this book was great, showing and giving more information than Discovering Computers. I recommend the book Publishing a Blog with Blogger for those who want to make a blog fast.

Chapters:

• Introduction- talks about what a blog is and how it works, what tools you need, and offers additional help, along with how to use the book.
• 1. Starting your blog- tells you where you have to go, set your account, name your blog, choose a template, viewing your dashboard, and signing in and out.
• 2. Writing your blog- tells you how to get down to the writing. How to add ,edit, and your posts, linking blogs, saving and publishing your draft, and formatting and your pictures.
• 3. Bloggoing from afar- tells you how to blog an email, blog from your toolbar, set up and label audio blogger , and also blog on your cell phone.
• 4. Personalizing your blog- tells how to add the description, more about templates and picking one, adding links, removing and renaming sections, adding your previous posts, changing headers and adding footers, unifying your color scheme, saving ,republishing, and backing up the templates , and changing the dates and time zone display.
• 5. Telling others about yourself- tells how to view and edit your profile, add photos to your profile, adding general info., blurbs, and searchable bits, searching others profiles and how to format your "about me".
• 6. Getting others to contribute- How to leave, view, allow, delete, stop, hide, and bar comments, adding and removing members, formatting members posts, and joining a blog.
• 7. Hosting your blog yourself- Tells you how to get a web host, web domain, switching to your FTP, FTP settings, testing, posting, and adding photos to your FTP'd blog, and removing you navbar.
• 8. Getting the word out- Shows how to List your blog, announce new posts, syndicate your blog, offer link to site feed, and how to index you blog.

Summary:
In Publishing a Blog with Blogger, the author helps you start a blog fast. Without any of detail that might side track you. Shows you how to set things up step by step.

It seems to be very easy to follow with colorful pictures and brief description on the steps you take. Anyone can start easily with this book.