To begin, you must have a Google account (Google, Gmail, Blogger). One Google account allows you to use all their services. Use that account to log into Blogger.com (or sign up if you need to).
If this is the first time you have used Blogger your page will be blank with a button to "Create New Blog".
The first thing to do is to "create a new blog" in the upper left corner.
Now is when you give your blog a title and a web address ("URL"). Your title can be virtually anything but your address must be unique. Think about a broad description or purpose of your blog. Your individual posts can have specific titles or subjects so your blog title should be generic enough for all your potential posts.
The address will identify your blog across the entire Internet so it must be unique. When you enter an address it will tell you if that name has already been taken. Use a combination of a subject word or two, your name, and a date like a year. For example, "summervacationjerry2019.blogspot.com", or "cookingwithjane2019.blogspot.com", or "familyfunwiththesmithsintexas.blogspot.com". You may have to try a few to get something to be accepted.
In my example I used "bloggingwithjerry2019.blogspot.com".
For the theme I like to start with a clean, simple design at first. You can change it later easily. So click on the "Simple" theme.
The red "Create blog!" button will be dim until you have completed those 3 steps. When you are done click that button and you will be presented with the editing or posts page.
You will probably see a box pop up that offers you a domain.
The purpose is to provide an opportunity for you to purchase a domain through Google. What that means is instead of people seeing your new blog as bloggingwithjerry2019.blogspot.com if you buy a custom domain it will appear as "bloggingwithjerry2019.com". This is a more advanced feature that you can always do later. For now, let's keep it simple and just click on "No thanks".
Now You Are Ready To Post!
You will see the main control page for your new blog. You have various menu options on the left and the main display area on the center/right.
If you see the red/orange box in the lower-left corner that says "Try the new Blogger" go ahead and click on that. This will enable some new features that we can explore later.
Now you need to make your first post and also change some settings. Let's make a post first.
One point to make here is there are two views of your new blog - the editing view and the preview. You are in the editing view now where you create your content and change the various settings. If you want to see what your blog looks like to others you click on the "View Blog" in the upper left corner. But let's not do that yet until we make our first post.
Make Your First Post
Now click on the red/orange button at the top, "New post". Here is where you enter your content - your text and any pictures or links or anything.
Notice the title of your blog is shown in the upper left corner and there is a place to enter a "Post title". This is where you can be more specific in your blog with all your various posts.
Now enter a post title like "My First Test Post". You can edit or delete it later. Then click in the main editing window and just type anything.
One thing to notice is you don't have to save your post, it is automatically saved every few seconds as you type. Type something and watch the "Save" button in the upper right corner and you will see it change to "Saving".
When you are finished, or at least for the moment, click on "Close" and you will go back to the main control window. Don't click on "Publish" yet because that will make it visible to the world. This is most likely not the post for that and we need to change a few settings first.
Changing Some Settings
Now click on "Settings" in the left menu. That menu will expand to show some new options.
Here you can change the overall title of your blog if you want, or even the blog address. (You will rarely want to do that.) But since this is a test blog we want to prevent search engines from indexing our blog for the world to see (you can make it public later if you want). So click on the edit button next to "Listed on Blogger. Visible to search engines" and select "No" to those two options.
Then save the changes.
HTTPS
Ensure the "HTTPS Redirect" is set to "yes". That ensures your blog is secure.
Permissions
Authors - In the permissions you will see your name as the admin of your blog. If you would like to invite others to post on your blog (family, friends) here is where you can add them.
Blog Readers - Click on edit next to Blog Readers and you it will expand to show more options.
By default your blog is public so anyone can read it. Since we turned off the search engines above that means someone will have to have the specific link to see your blog. Which means you will need to send it to them by email or maybe post the link (Facebook, for example). So leaving this setting as "public" is probably ok for now. But if you really want to be private you can select only blog authors or private only to specific readers. If you select "private" you will need to enter the specific email addresses of people. That's pretty extreme but it's there if you want it. Generally, if you are writing a blog it is for other people to see. So if you turn the search engines off and leave this setting as "public" then you have pretty good control over who will see it.
To read more about this see the Google Blogger support article Control access to your blog.
Posts, comments, and sharing
Another setting I like to change is to limit comments on my posts. If you want an interactive blog here is where you can allow people to make comments. But if you want to limit who can comment, or disable comments altogether, here is where you do it. This depends on who your target audience is. If you will limit your blog to just family and friends you can leave this pretty open (anyone can comment and no moderation). But if your blog will be more public and may be visible to search engines you may want to "always moderate" comments or turn them off completely.
To disable comments from even showing look at "Comment Location", click the drop-down box and select "hide".
Don't forget to click on "Save Settings" in the upper right corner.
Language and formatting
This menu will allow us to change the time zone of our blog. You can change your language and date formats here as well.
These are the basic settings I like to change. You can explore the others and read about them but they are beyond the scope of this introduction to Blogger for now.
Back To Editing
Click "Posts" on the left to get back to the main posts list. This is generally 'home base' where you will edit and control all your posts. Create a second post or even a third so get familiar with the process. Click on "View Blog" to see how they look. Change some of the formatting or even change the theme if you want. Explore the options with your test blog - now is the time to learn.
When you are ready you can be more formal about a post and click on "Publish" so it will be visible to the world (depending on the options you selected).
Tip: You can create many draft posts to organize, edit, and polish them before you ever publish any of them. I like to create a post or two that are just note-taking and will never be published. I keep a post just for ideas, sort of an outline of topics to see where I want to take the blog in the future. I have another post where I collect references like URLs to related content (other blogs, YouTube videos, useful websites, etc.). You need someplace to collect your brilliant ideas whenever you have them, quickly and efficiently.
Conclusion
So now you have created a blog, made your first post, and changed some basic settings. Congratulations! Now go write some fantastic content and change the world!
