As a way of getting my first taste of what a blog is, how difficult it is to set up, and how one maintains it, I set up a test site on Blogger. The ease of setting up the site was remarkable! Truly, within five minutes of sign-up, I was editing and working with a blog site. It is clear why blogging has grown so fast, with reportedly 5 million of the sites alone being hosted by Blogger!.
However, because my interests go more to scale and bleeding edge funcitonality, I will forego using a hosted site (though it appears to be the right answer for most users). Instead, I will investigate and chose my own software package(s).
Author’s Note: I actually decided to commit to a blog on April 27, 2005, and began recording soon thereafter my steps in doing so. Because of work demands and other delays, the actual site was not released until July 18, 2005. To give my ‘Preparing to Blog …’ postings a more contemporaneous feel, I arbitrarily changed posting dates on this series one month forward, which means some aspects of the actual blog were better developed than some of these earlier posts indicate. However, the sequence and the content remain unchanged. A re-factored complete guide will be posted at the conclusion of the ‘Prepare to Blog …’ series, targeted for release about August 18, 2005. mkb
