(I know that for most of you, this is old hat, but I’ve had a couple of friends (K and L:-) ) ask me about this just recently…)

Why Blog?
There are so many reasons why people blog that I figured I’d just talk about why I blog:-)
For me, there are two main reasons. Initially, it was about keeping in contact with people I wasn’t seeing as regularly (I started blogging at about the same time as I stopped working when I came home to have Puggle—three and a half years ago!)
The other reason, which has become far more important over time, is to record what I’m doing with the children—and their progress. I’m finding it useful to record my plans and list what we’ve done, in one place (I’m expecting I’ll be able to use these notes when I need to talk with a moderator eventually).
Personally as I’ve been exploring homeschooling, I’ve found other people’s blogs have given me an opportunity to peer into their houses to get some ideas about what it might really look like. I like to think that my blog might be equally as useful for some other people—kind of my way of putting back in to the online homeschooling community:-)
Another side benefit, is that my blog acts like an easily searchable brain… I’ve been visiting my parents, and wanted to tell mum about a recipe, so I’ll search my blog. Lots of the things I blog about, I do so in order to rememeber them (useful websites, plans, things that worked, and things that didn’t).

How to start?
Blogging is pretty easy (or can be!) to set up. I have used a number of different programmes at various times, and they all do the same basic stuff. But there are some things you should probably consider before you begin.

The first thing to think about is probably what you’re going to blog about and who your audience is. I blog in the personal sphere, but I’m happy for anyone to read my blog (I choose to use nom-de-blogs for my children, and only post non-identifying photos of them for this reason). I don’t need to hide my posts, so that is one requirement I don’t need to consider (although, depending on which solution you choose, it’s possible to hide your entire blog, as well as individual posts).

You’ll need to choose a blogging application.
Blogger is where I blogged most (it’s the stuff I’ve also copied to The Genial Hearth). You can I believe, choose to make your blog either entirely public, or entirely private (I’m not sure whether this means viewing is restricted, or just that the blog isn’t made visible in searches). You can tag your posts, and they’ve just introduced an ‘email comment’ option, so people can follow a conversation in the comments. You can also have multiple posters to one blog. It’s not possible to queue posts, you can change the date on which they appear to have been posted, but if you have a regular posting schedule you wish to maintain while away, that’s not possible to set up. You can have multiple blogs attached to one person… so if you wanted a cooking blog, and a book review blog, and a homeschool blog, that’s easily done.
Live Journal probably offers the most flexibility for privacy of any of these five. You can choose to make all your posts public, or you can hide some or all of them behind a friends-lock. I believe it’s also possible to vary the filter, so that some are visible to different groups. The downside is that people who are going to read friends-locked posts need to also have a Live Journal account. You can both catagorise and tag posts.
HomeschoolBlogger was one I set up, but never did anything with, and it appears to have eaten the name.
Homeschooljournal.net is based on Wordpress.com.
Wordpress.com is another I have set up and done nothing with (it was when I was considering shifting blogs… The Genial Hearth is a Wordpress blog and they share most of the same features as far as I can tell). You can have multiple blogs attached to one person. You can use both catagories and tags. The blog can be public or a private (members only) one—other viewers would also need to sign up. Or, you can choose to password protect certain entries. And if you decide after you’ve been blogging for a while that you’d like to move here, they have a handy tool for shifting existing blog posts from other providers.

There are a myriad of other free blog sites that I haven’t mentioned (because I haven’t used them at all), plus dozens of different paid alternatives if you’d rather go that route. Look around, you’ll start seeing different ones all over:-)

Choose a blog application.

Now you can start the fun stuff. You need to choose a Blog name (I’ve used Fe2h2o, fefifofum and The Genial Hearth) which may or may not be the same as your posting name (I’ve used fe2h2o, fefifofum and Fe). This will usually be part of the blog address. It’s probably a good idea to choose something memorable—you don’t want to have to struggle to remember all your login information! (There is always the possibility that your chosen name will already be taken, so you may need to get a little creative.) Then, you just have to follow the prompts to get it started.

Of course, the real ‘work’ of a blog is the writing of posts. You can choose to write your posts directly, or do them off-line and upload them later. You can include photos (or only post photos). You can fiddle with the general appearance of your blog (all the ones I linked to have a range of themes from which you can choose.) And of course, you can add favourite things to the sidebars (including links to your favourite blogs!) You can even include a link to your feedreader, so that people can read the posts you’re reading. (There’s always something new to try… in setting up the email subscription option here, I’ve joined up to Feedburner, which gives you really easy options for monitoring your traffic. I’m finding watching what people come to read very interesting, as well as bizarre… some one found me with a google search for “t”!)

Hopefully, this covers most of your questions:-)
Happy Blogging!