Tip of the Day- Getting Started at ProBlogs.com!

First things first...Tips to starting a blog at ProBlogs.com!

Blogging is a great way to exercise your right to free speech. You can speak your mind, meet others with similar interests, promote yourself, and make your mark on the Internet.

We at ProBlogs have been very excited to see all of the bloggers that have already signed up! If you have not signed up yet, what are you waiting for, an invitation? Ok, here it is....

You are invited to sign up for a blog at ProBlogs.com!

Sign up at ProBlogs.com now

Here are some tips to starting your new blog:

Once you have clicked on 'Sign Up', you will be asked for a little information. One thing that you will need to choose is a 'Member Name'. This will also be used as the personalized domain name that will be the address of your blog, so choose wisely.

One good thing about signing up at ProBlogs is that MANY good names are still available. You do not want to have any spaces, and in most cases it is not necessary to ad numbers at the end. We recommend choosing something that is descriptive of you or your blog, and is easy for others to remember! You do want people to come back and read your blog again right? Some good names might be: parker, girlpower, insurance, salesspecialist, kaotic, pokerplayer, fasteddie...

If the first example was used your domain name would be: www.problogs.com/parker. Easy to remember right?

Once you submit your information you will receive an email confirmation. You must click on the link in this email in order to activate your ProBlogs account! If you do not receive this email please check your spam filters or junk email folder. If the email was blocked, make sure that you add problogs.com to your email's safe list.

When you sign into your account at ProBlogs.com you will be taken to the ProBlogs admin page. This is the area where you customize your blog and create notes. There are six headings accross the top of the screen: Home, Information, Settings, Notes, Comments, Photo Albums, and Lists.

The first thing that you should do is customize your blog. To choose a template or layout for your blog you will go to 'Design' which is located under the heading 'Settings'. There are many to choose from, just pick one that you think is cool. You are welcomed to try any that you wish, just click on 'View my blog', which is located in the upper-right-hand corner of the Admin screen to see what it looks like when applied.

Once your blog has the look that you like, you will want to upload your picture and enter some information about yourself and your blog. This is done by going to 'Author' and 'Description', which are both under the heading 'Information'. (Note: Somdifferent pre-made templates will display the description or logos differently, or will not display the description at all, if you wish to have this on your page you can enter the info into the author section, or choose a different template.) If you want your posts to be featured on the ProBlogs.com homepage you must have a picture uploaded! If the picture is too big or small, you can resize it by changing the width and height.

Now it is time to create your first Note! The first step is to create some categories that you would like to write about. If you want you can just create a 'General' category and have all of your posts go under this, or you can create many categories for every subject that you want to write about on your blog. This very important and you will not be able to post anything until this is done! To create new categories you go to 'Categories' which is located under the 'Notes' heading.

Once you have at least one category you can add a note, which is the actual "post" that people will read. Once you do this, YOU ARE BLOGGING!

I hope that these tips will help you get started, and we are happy that you are interested in starting a blog with us!

Remember, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg- There are many other things that you can do with your blog, including adding pictures and files, and creating lists of your favorite friends, music, books, links...etc. Feel free to explore the various sections of the Admin screen and have some fun!

Feel free to comment on this post if you wish to respond, add anything, or if you have questions.

Thanks for reading, and keep on bloggin'!