Broads Blogging Workshop

A bunch of broads came over and we went set up accounts to blog and twitter together as a way of building our profiles. It was exciting in the same way that the big BlogHer conference had been for me because the small number was more than compensated by the fact that these were my group of gals. So now, if you go to Twitter, you can read the twitter streams not only for me at twitter.com/BroadHumor, but for Donna Wheeler , Suzi Iselt, and Michelle Clay.

So if you didn't or couldn't come, here's what you need to do. Create a blog. If you're an absolute beginner, here's how to do it in simple steps.

Blogger can set you up in a few easy steps. Yes, you'll get frustrated when you get errors because your username or blog name are taken, or you didn't check a box, or you couldn't read the insanely difficult security question that keeps bots from creating blogs. But it's only three pages of that, and you're in. Write something and hit "PUBLISH POST" (SAVE NOW merely creates a draft - it won't show up on your blog). Click the "VIEW BLOG' button when it finishes publishing and bookmark the page so that tomorrow you won't wonder how to find your blog again. Next, go to the "dashboard" (the link is on the top right) and create your profile and save.

You're almost done. Next to your blog listing is a link to "settings." Clicking that will bring up a page where you can give a general description of the blog. Save it. Then go to the "comments" link and scroll down to control comments. For example, do you want to restrict comments to bloggers or let anyone comment? You have to change the setting to make commenting open to everyone. You should leave verification on so that you don't get spam comments. And you might want to have Blogger send you an email whenever you get a comment by putting your email in the box at the bottom. Click save and you're done.

If you're feeling brave, you can go to the "template" link and play with the layout of your page. Or you can just click over to your blog and admire it. Then send a Twitter post - called a "tweet" - that you are up and running.