For those who used to spend lots of time writing HTML back in 90s, it may be hard to accept just how much has changed since then. Writing a “website” is not at all the same experience. Twitter , RSS, WordPress, Facebook, Digg, Podcast, you name it, there is plenty of web 2.0/social networking going on, and it can be hard to navigate this new internet language  without going crazy or just giving up.  But it doesn’t have to be that hard. I’ve had lots of help geting my site up and running, and some things I just had to learn as they were not obvious. Once learned however….it’s childsplay. So follow me on a series of blogs looking to sort this out and hopefully help you build your own blog!

First we need a plan to help break down this goal into some easy tasks. Our aim is to create a blog called http://astronomyabc.wordpress.com/ and link it into social networks and other cool stuff.

1. Create the Blog on WordPress. http://en.wordpress.com/signup
   • You will have to decide on a name and give an email address.
   • An activation message is sent to your email account, which means that they can check that you really do own the email address. Standard stuff these days.
   • You now have a blog…that was easy.
   • Go to http://wordpress.com/  and login using the username and password you just gave WordPress

Now that you have a blog, it is rather sad but nobody is watching or waiting to use it, you have to start making it personal and deciding what you want to blog about. Take a look around your new administration webpage for your blog and Part 2 will cover Themes and Plugins……

AstronomyABC blog

Part 2: Make your Blog your own (Themes & Plugins)

Part 3: Linking to Social Networks

Part 4: Tracking Statistics about your site

Part 5: What should I write about?