Photoshop Withdrawal as I Gimp along

Part of this blogs mission statement says that it and its accompanying website will be built using free, and preferably open source tools.  One of the single most important components of building a site and to an extent a blog is to be able to manipulate your images.  Like many others I've long used Adobe Photoshop, however since this conflicts with my mission statement I will not be using in on this blog or the site I'll be building.  To take over the role of Photoshop I have been exploring Gimp.  Gimp is an open source image manipulation program that has many similarities to Photoshop.  It has layers and most of the tool suite that is available in Photoshop.  However some of its terminology is different for example instead of the magnetic lasso of Photoshop, Gimp calls theirs the scissor select tool.  Also Gimp functions differently than Photoshop and on some levels is less intuitive.  The most annoying part is that certain basic features that are available in Photoshop such as drawing an arrow requires finding, downloading, and installing an extension.  The learning curve has been slowing how quickly I am able to edit images where something might have taken me five minutes in Photoshop (or less) I now sometimes have o spend half an hour figuring out how to do a comparable action in Gimp.  So I've been going though a serious Photoshop withdrawal, that said some of the features in gimp I have taken a liking to after I've figured out how to utilize them it just a matter of spending time with the program until I've become relatively proficient with it.  I do have to say that for someone who struggles with technical aspects of computing might struggle installing extensions in Gimp this is because it has no wizard to put the extensions in the correct location this is left up to the end-user.  I will most likely look into other image manipulation programs at a latter date as well.

Starting a Blog on Blogger

Are you ready or just want to set up a Blog on Blogger.  Goggle has definitely made it very easy to start blogging.  The first step is to log into your Google account if you don't have one you will need to create one its petty quick I'm not going to bother to explain the Google sign up process, if your scratching your head at this point you have a long long LONG way to do.  If you are still wondering just do a search Google sign up should work fine, basically if you can't find something search for it!  Anyways just go to Blogger and activate it with your Google account and it will bring you to the Blogger home screen.  From here you can quickly create a blog.

• To create a new blog on Blogger click the "new blog" button that appears on the upper left of the screen after you have signed in with a Google account.  (hint its where the arrow is pointing)

Blogger Home Screen to start a new blog just click new blog! *Since I've
"started" a few other blogs on blogger they appear on my home screen,
some of these blogs exist in name only currently other are seldom updated
and their stats reflect this. *edited with paint

• After clocking on the "New Blog" button Blogger brings you to this screen where you will name your blog and create its address.  Based on what address are available you might have to change this a few times.  Don't worry to much one of the advantages of blogger is that you can change these at any time latter on.  *note if your blog is well established DO NOT change your address on Blogger it will reopen the address for registration and not redirect anything to your new address.  Instead if you want to move an established blog setup a new domain for it and Blogger will redirect to your new site.  Also don't worry about picking a template for your blog from the start this is better handled latter and the default will work fine for your first few posts. 

Blogger create new blog screen. *edited with gimp

Configurations! you have just created a Blog, Blogger should have redirected you to your Blogger homepage which should now list the blog you just created.  At this point I would recommend creating a first post, personally I usually do a post on what exactly the blog intends to be etc (it helps me focus my own intentions) but really can write about anything (though try to stay on your blog's subject).  Also do not include content over PG 13 (unless that's what you want I have no objections), if you include content over PG 13 you will be penalized by search engines and other content filters.  (Notice even here I did not use certain wording, or word combinations that may trip such content filters, nor will I be listing possible words and word combinations anywhere on this Blog, just use common sense and think of George Carlin and you will be fine.)  

Before Starting a Blog or Site

Whoa I almost got ahead of my self and skipped a critical yet surprisingly easy step in the creation process.  For all sites and blogs that you build on the web it is essential that you have an idea regarding its the direction and subject material.  This is important because some of the first steps you will take setting you your blog or site will effect its performance online.  Specifically registering its root url either as a domain name or with a secondary address such as those hosted by Blogger.  The importance of a root url has been reduced but it still plays a role in telling both the search engines and your potential audience what your site or blog is about.  For instance the the url of this blog is http://webbuildingblocks.blogspot.com/, basically a potential reader can tell with a large degree of certainty what might be discussed here and so can search engines.  A bad root would be something along the lines of "joesblog." why?  Well if someone sees a url of joesblog. what does this tell them besides that its a blog written by some guy named Joe.  The same can be said for search engines basically the url might help if someone is searching for Joe or blogs by guys named Joe but unless Joe is a famous individual it will not help drive traffic to him.  A bad url can be overcome by good content, and properly optimizing other elements of a site, but if you are just starting out why not try to find a url that fits you and your subject?

Two key points to figure out before you start a blog or site, first what is it going to be about and two, a rough idea of a name for the blog that is related to its subject matter.  I say rough idea because many urls are already registered so you will have to adjust based upon what is available.

A note on this blog's SEO

Before someone makes a big deal about it I could care less about optimizing my posts for search engines.  I will do some basic SEO (search engine optimization), i.e. listing this blog in directories, getting relevant back-links, incorporating social media (especially Google + more on this latter), and staying with a field of related subjects etc.  What I will not be doing is optimizing the text of a post explicitly for SEO.  I will show how to do this latter during the site development process but I have come to dislike the style of writing necessary to produce an optimized SEO.  So before some one says that a particular post could be better optimized by changing the wording from one way to another.  I really don't care right now.  I write for people and my self not some mindless robot code.

Free tools, a commitment to and a word of caution

As I've previously said I'm going to try to build this blog and the site as inexpensily as possible.  Currely I am used to using adobe's bloated and overpriced web managment suite.  In the last few years many free open source tools have been released that provide many of the functions avalible in adobes creative suite. This blog affords me the oppurtinity to gradually build up my famalarity and profecency with these tools, it is my intent to show how to use these tools to develop, build, and manage a blog and then an entire site.  I will post reviews of the free programs I try and guides to to the tools I end up using.  A general note when a free program or tool is unfamiliar to make sure to check its veracity, while no where near as bad as it used to be (thank you Google:) ) some "free" programs are any thing but providing unscrupulous developers an easy way to introduce malicious code onto your computer or worse yet your site.  Google has done a relatively good job cleaning up their search results but it pays to be careful and to do at least some cursory research before making use of a program.  Some simple things to look for are reviews from third party resources the more trusted the better, make sure read reviews from more than one source as on occasion you will run across false reviews. 

Why Blogger and Why am I'm Doing a Blog

The choice to use Blogger and let the blog exist here was a conscious decision the idea is to have the blog exist off site.  I've used both Wordpress and Blogger in the past and I chose blogger for this particular project because its absolutely painless (relativity speaking) to set up plus its free and one of the goals was to do this as cheaply as possible without sacrificing quality. If in the future this blog receives a lot of traffic, something I'm not expecting, then a move might be considered but for now Blogger is the perfect developmental environment.  I have to make one disclaimer, I'm not 100% fluent in Blogger I've played around with it a few times in the past and found it quick and easy at the same time it provides easy accessibly to its underlying html.  Rolling your eyes yet at the one of the most intimating subjects for beginners ie html don't!  Any thing that I show you how do to in html I will spell out and keep easy.
        So now that this blog is started before we dive into building a site lets set up the blog and get it web ready.  Many of the aspects of setting up a blog are transferable to web-site creation and with blogger its easy to demonstrate these subjects.  Think of setting up a blog as an introduction, and a get way to learn some basic techniques that are highly transferable.  I strongly recommend anyone who is just starting their "web education" to start with a blog, share it with you friends and family, make you mistakes on it, and learn from it.  Blogs have been intentionally streamlined to allow novice user to quickly increase their understanding and skills of their architecture, and they have built in help sections.  Once you go and start to create your own site you will not as convenient and quick access to help and support to resolve any problems you might have.

Mission Statment

This blog intends to walk you though the steps of building a good site from start to finish.  To often "guides" assume a high level of technical knowledge and usually will force you to seek additional help on their subsections with out explicitly providing direction.  The other direction that guides go is web site building for dummies, I'm not necessarily referring to the line of dummies books but to the massive stack of titles that say something along the lines of "Build your First Website".  If that sounds like a title for a children's book than you won't be disappointed with the level of these guides.  There are also many companies out there that purport to make website building easy by providing you with some simplified tools common templates etc, while this might not sound bad to someone just starting out I highly recommend avoiding these sites, some will try to charge you money but all come with a single major issue and that is with the root domain name.  They will always force you to use an address structured like "theirname.com/yoursitesname" or the other way around.  This is bad, if you are building a business website this is extremely bad, for starters it will immediately make you look less professional, and secondly you will unlikely ever have good search results.  By making you use their domain name as your root name these companies are actually benefiting themselves with any of the content you might create.  Yes this blog will suffer from these issues as well i.e. the address for it is webbuildingblocks.blogspot.com.  Note the ending i.e. blogspot.com comparatively this is relativelybegnign compared to those that use their address first.

 The goal of this Blog is to show the different web site developmental aspects and what is available to someone just starting or someone who has some experience and is looking to take the next step.  To do this a site will be developed along side of this blog, with the posts directly drawing from the steps that have been taken on the site construction.  This blog is not interned for high level technical users although as the build progresses some advanced subjects will be discussed but the aim is to present topics and subjects in easily understandable terms.  The site that will be built in conjunction with these posts will be built as cheaply as possible and as such I will not be using web development and content management software priced at heart attack prices such as Adobe's creative suites.  Many of the program that I will be using will be new to me as well so I am also approaching this as a way to examine the programs used.  In a way I am writing this to organize my own thoughts as much as guide for others.  I am not currently planning on getting into css+ or HTML5 coding as this makes my eyes glaze over, my focus will be on the basics.