Internet Tricks -- There are many small business owners and/or individuals who have in one way or another wanted to blog so badly but are
held back because they think its cumbersome. Well, it's not.
This tutorial offers a step by step easy process you can
follow to put up a fully customized blog that is completely linked to social
media.
Step 1: Gather Resources
Step 1: Gather Resources
ü Computer
and working internet connection
ü Facebook
like page - create a Facebook page for your blog. It should have the same title
as your blog.
ü Gmail
account - open a Gmail account if you don’t have one already and activate your
Google+ profile
ü Open a
twitter account if you do not have one, plus any other social media platform
you want to link to your blog.
ü Cash
for online transaction - Get some cash into your PayPal account or credit card
to purchase a domain (if you are not conversant with online payment systems
contact me and I will guide you for free)
Go to http://www.blogger.com sign in with your Gmail account and go
straight to the “new Blog” button.
Give it your desired title (should be same as that of the
Facebook page) and use the name to create the whole or part of the blogspot
URL. Select your desired template and
click on “view blog” to see how it changes each time you modify it.
Customize your blog within blogger settings using the
following:
ü Pages –
can be used tabs, create them and use the drop down arrow to choose how you
want them to appear.
ü Posts
are easy to insert, just click on new post and create content and post. You can
play with tools in the edit window, like the page break, etc. You can also check
the settings section (on the right side of the post editing section) and add
things such as tags, search description, location etc. Always check to see how
each action modifies the page.
ü Modifying
the arrangement – It’s very easy to modify your blog and give it the look you want
or one that is suitable for the type of content to be posted. Click on the “layout”
menu item and edit the different sections of your template, adding desired
gadgets. If you have a logo (200x200)
upload it to the Favicon gadget located in the left upper corner of the layout
(Doing this will make your logo to be displayed in the browser instead of the
default blogger logo).
ü Go to
the template designer (the link is highlighted above the blog layout and it’s
readily visible) and help yourself to as many things as you want. You are free to go to the advanced section,
play with fonts, colors, and text sizes for various sections.
Step3: Purchasing
a custom domain (.com, .INFO, .org, .CA, .biz, etc)
There are quite a number of cheap domain hosting providers
and you are free to choose whichever works for you. I recommend joohost.com because that is what I used and
they also accept PayPal payments. Visit the Joohost site and explore the
different packages offered. .INFO is the cheapest and goes for only $1.99. Look
for a suitable one and buy the domain alone because you won’t need other things
sold there.
Step 4:
Redirecting your blog to your new domain
This is a very easy process. Just follow the steps outlined
below:
1.
In your blog menu go to Settings and click on Basics.
The “Publishing” section is the
first there and you will see a link “add a custom domain”, click on that. Enter
the URL you purchased and click on save (The
link must start with www).
2.
You should be able to see an error message
containing two CNAMES. Each CNAME has two sections “Name, Label or Host” and
“Destination, Target or Points to”. The first CNAME represents everyone on Google.
Name= “www” and Destination is “ghs.google.com”.
The second CNAME is specific to your Google Account and your blog, and often differs
from one person to another.
3.
Now you have to provide the CNAMES to your
domain register. There is a help
page with procedures of how to go about it for common domain registers. However, you are simply required to navigate
to the Domain Name System (DNS) settings.
For the first CNAME, you locate where it’s
written “Name, Label or Host” and enter
“www” then check for “Destination, Target or Points to” (it’s usually on the same row) and
enter “ghs.google.com”. Do the same
for the second CNAME.
4.
If you purchased a joohost domain, you will
notice that it’s not listed in the Blogger help page. So this is what you are
supposed to do.
Login
into your Joohost account, click on Launch
domains, then DNS tab, followed by DNS Manager, and lastly on “Edit
Zone” located just below your domain name. Find the www and put the “ghs.google.com” in
the adjacent column. Then click on the “quick
add” button and enter the second CNAME.
 |
| Joohost DNS page |
Note
that host in the first column and Points
to in the second column. Click on save and wait for one hour for your
domain to link with blogger before repeating number 1 above in blogger. The error
message will show if they haven’t linked and so you can use that to find out.
Be sure to save when they finally link.
Your
blog should now be able to redirect to your custom domain.
Step
5: Installing Facebook Like (fan) Box
This is the easiest of them
all.
1.
First you will be required to fetch the Like Page
URL. Login into your Facebook account and open the fan page from your profile.
While in the dashboard click on home, then click on the profile picture once,
and copy the link. The link should look like this https://www.facebook.com/name of your fan page.
2.
Now
follow this link https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/like-box-for-pages/
3.
Paste the page URL you fetched earlier under the
section “Facebook Page URL”, specify your preferred size and shade of the Like
box then click on get code.
4.
In the window that appears, click on IFR
AME and copy the IFRAME code.
5.
Comeback to your blog, go to “layout” click on “add
gadget” in the right or left side of the main page. Then scroll down to
HTML/JavaScript, paste your Like page IFRAME code there and click on save. Drag the added gadget to your desired position
and then click on “Save arrangement.
6.
You should be able to see your like Box now.
That is a pretty informative and complete guideline for setting a new blogger supported blog. Reminds me of the time I set my first ever blog a while ago.
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