Blog Basics - Chapter 4: Give birth to your blog; your first post.
Wow, we’ve come a long way in only a short time. We’ve decided we want to start a blog, we decided what software we want to use to create our blog and we’ve decided where we want to host our blog. Once that was all setup we continued by customizing our blog so that it looks and works the way we want it to. That was the hard part; now the fun and more useful part will begin, adding content to your blog.
Chapter 4, Section 1: Pages and Posts, Posts and Pages.
Depending on what blogging software you’re using there may be a difference between the content you choose to post on your blog. Some software packages only offer a way to “post” while some offer more choices such as individual pages. Posts are like an entry into your virtual journal, when you post items they are added onto your blog in the order they were published. Posts often contain the author who posted it, the date and time the post was published and sometimes categories or tags to go along with the post. Most posts offer a way for visitors to leave a comment or a ping back (more about these later) and usually they have their own page yet they all come together in an archive and on the homepage. A page on the other hand is just a static webpage on your blog. It contains no author, date/time or category. Pages are aimed at creating permanent non chronological content such as an about page, a contact page or in the case of this series a collection of related articles. I use pages for indexes; for example I have a page for reviews so I can take my posts that contain reviews and put them someplace where people can easily find them without having to dig through all of my posts. I also usually create a contact and about page to give visitors a quick and easy way to see what this site is about and to give them a way to contact me if they should want to send me money or something. If your software offers both posts and pages I suggest you use a combination of both, otherwise use whatever is available.
Chapter 4, Section 2: Your Introductory Post
Before you dive in and start writing your first post I offer this bit of advice. Get used to your software first. Don’t jump right in and start posting, play around with the software and get used to everything first, that way you’re aware of the capabilities of the software and how everything works together. Create a test post, try out different formats, add a comment or two to see how it looks and try different methods of creating pages. You can always delete a post or page and it’s much easier to experiment now before your blog is well known. Once you’ve discovered all the quirks in the software then you’re ready to create your first official post.
What to write about, this is often the biggest question that pops in to one’s head when they’re ready to start posting. You’ve come all this way, you’ve gone through tons of work to get your blog up and running, you’ve picked a topic and now….you’re stuck. An intro post is often the best first post because it breaks you from the first post jitters and it gives your readers an understanding of what this blog will be about, if anyone even reads it. :-) Unless you’re starting another blog and expect your existing visitors to come to your new blog it will often take time for people to find and start reading your blog. Since this is the case it’s often true that you will (and should) have much more content than you do now so your beloved intro post will most likely be archived by then. When ever I visit blogs I always search out the first post, it’s pretty interesting to see what people have decided to put as their very first entry into their new blog.
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