Google® Business Solutions All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Adding a Blog with Blogger

In This Chapter

• Exploring what blogs are and what they can offer you

• Understanding blogs' popularity

• Planning blogs

• Using Google Blogger

• Changing settings and options in Google Blogger

Blogging is one of the most widely used words relating to creating content for the Web — and one of the most poorly understood.

Blogging relates closely to the original purpose of the Web. When Tim Berners-Lee first designed HTML — HyperText Markup Language — while working at the CERN physics laboratories in the late 1980s, he intended for users not only to visit Web sites but to be publishers as well.

It turned out, however, that even using HTML — as simple as it is — plus the hassles of getting a domain name, securing Web hosting space, and paying for these extra costs were all too much for most people. As Web use exploded, Web publishing seemed to be limited to a smaller and smaller percentage of the audience.

Blogs should be viewed as both a precursor to and part of the same social networking phenomenon as Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Picasa Web, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites largely built on a Web 2.0 technical foundation. (Blogs, however, predate Web 2.0 by a bit.) Tim Berners-Lee was right to think that people very much wanted to express themselves on the Web, as individuals and as groups; however, the Web needed specialized sites that removed some of the complexity to help them do it.

Now blogs have evolved a bit, not only for personal use but also for ...