Yearly Archives: 2007

Starting a Great Blog Part 1 – Intro

Have you ever thought about starting a blog? Even if you haven’t, there are plenty of reasons to. It’s a lot of fun. Take a look at some good blogs, and get the feel for blogging:

You see? The term “blog” doesn’t mean what a lot of people think. It doesn’t refer to an online journal (there are waaaay too many of those annoying things). Sure, webjournals (as I call them), use blogging services, but they’re not the “Best of the Blogosphere”. They are the rubbish that sinks to the bottom (you can probably tell I don’t think much of webjournals). A blog is merely a website that features articles posted in a chronological format. You probably read blogs without even knowing it. If you think about it, you’ll realize that news sites, like LeakyNews.com or NYTimes.com, are basically blogs. What are they but news stories posted in a chronological format?

Now the question is, what do you want to blog about? Here at Webmaster-Source, we blog about things that interest webmasters. At ProBlogger, they blog about blogging. What would you like to blog about? Bicycling? Bowling? Writing? You can blog about anything…as long as you are addicted to it. You can’t write about something you don’t like doing. To blog, you must find a niche topic that interests you. I can’t help you there.

So, have you got a topic? Good.

Stay tuned. Tomorrow we will teach you about naming your blog, getting a domain, and finding hosting. We’ll also show you how to get hosting for nothing, or next to nothing.

Below are the other parts of the tutorial:

Create a Business Card in Photoshop

Why pay someone to make business cards for you when you can do it yourself? All you need is Adobe Photoshop, a printer, and some cardstock (available at Staples or similar stores). This tutorial will teach you how to make a basic business card.…

Welcome to the New Webmaster-Source

Welcome to the New Webmaster-Source! We’ve migrated most of the site over from the old host to the new one, entered most of our content into WordPress, built a new layout, and made some other changes as well. The topsites are down, but they…

Quick-Start to Launching a Website

So you want to set up a website? A professional quality website that doesn’t look like you threw it together in 10 minutes? If you don’t care about content or spending time on a site, stop reading. NOTE: This is NOT a lesson in…

PHP Includes

When you make changes to your site (add another link to your navigation, completely change the layout, etc.) you probably have to make changes to all 172 HTML files. Right? Do you wish you could just change it once? You can (if your host…

Webmonkey

Webmonkey is one of the oldest webmaster tutorial sites around. They update their content regularly and sort it into meaningful categories. The content is well-written and easy to read. If you’re a beginning webmaster, head over to Webmonkey. I’m also fan of their MonkeyBites…

CSS Column Length Adjustment Script

Frustrated with CSS’s inability to make your navigational sidebars the same length as your content (or vice versa)? Project Seven‘s got a script that’ll help. This JavaScript library adjusts your CSS columns to be the same height. Technically you can do this with CSS,…

DynamicDrive

DynamicDrive is a huge repository of DHTML scripts. Some of their scripts have little practical value, but others are truly useful. Their IFRAME resizing and RSS ticker scripts can be useful, for instance. It has nearly zero practical use, but the snow script is…

W3Schools

In addition to lots of great webmaster tutorials, W3Schools has a message board (my favorite part) where you can request help. When you post a message, whoever wants to help will answer. It may be a bunch of people who have different opinions, though…

Userplane Webchat

Userplane’s webchat is flash-based, unlike the Java-based ParaChat. It not only has text, but audio and video as well. There aren’t ads, but it says that it’s provided by Userplane. Ordinary users can create rooms, though they can delete only the ones the created.…