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.

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.