But it offers more than just space for expressions. It allows the blog owner to update friends, post messages, and earn money by placing advertisements. Some people even use blogs as avenues for exchanging thoughts and opinion regarding a certain topic. That is if you know how to design and install your own blog.



For a lot of people out there who has not tried blogging, there is nothing to worry about in setting up your own blog and making it extravagant. The steps are as easy as one? two? three!

Step one: Get your own blog account.

It all starts in getting a blog account. For your blog to get out there, you need software to create your blog entries, and a host that will place your blog in the World Wide Web.

There are a lot of options regarding this matter because of the availability of a lot of blogging companies that offer services for free or at a fixed rate. The choice is yours. The thing with paid blog hosts are the premium features that it offers. But if you do not need many features, a free blog service will do the trick.

Here is a list of commendable free blogging services and blogging software:

Services:

-Blogger

-Live journal

-Livelogcity

-Blogdrive

-Squarespace

Software:

-Movabletype Free

-WordPress

-Geeklog

-Greymatter

-Pmachine Free

-Nucleus

A lot of online sites like online communities and online albums started to integrate blogs as part of their services.

Step two: Personalize your website by installing cool free resources.

It is possible to make your blog site as beautiful as possible by adding free features. Aside from that, there are free resources that add practicality and function to your blog.

Here are some examples:

Templates

Templates are generally html codes, but when executed, they add personality and style to your blog sites. And you do not necessarily have to stick to the preset templates offered by the blogging companies. The Internet provides a lot of resources for acquiring templates. Here are some free template and skin resources:

- BlogSkins

Templates from BlogSkins are compatible with Blogger and MovableType software. They also have a featured skin of the day that you may want to try out.

- Blog Fashions

The company allows the site visitors to copy or alter their featured templates. The templates, however, are compatible only to Movable Type software.

- Blogmaker

Blogmaker offers tools that will make blogging easy. The only thing that users have to do is to provide contents, and use these tools to publish blog sites. They also offer a vast number of templates to choose from.

Tag boards

Tag boards are like templates ? an html code. But tag boards add the sense of interaction and instant communication to your blog site. With this feature, your blog fans will have a venue to instantly comment. You also get to read all their comments at once without going each of the comment section of your entries.

Here are some commendable sites that offer tagboards

-MyShoutBox

-Tag-Board

-TagboardSite

Games and animations

To make the blog site dynamic, there are animations and games that can be placed in blog sites too.

To put these animations in your site, check out the following online companies:

-Animations

-GIFAnimations

-AnimationFactory

-Aardman Animations Limited

Step Three: The rest is up to your imagination (and perseverance too!)

Since blogs are sets of html codes, the more that you know about html, the more that you will be free to make your own adjustments to your blog.

Knowing a lot of resources sites can also be handy, since the combination of these resources will determine the overall functionality and look of your site.

It all starts with simple things and following simple steps and before you know it, you have become masters in the art of blog making!