Step 3: Get Your Website/Blog on Google

Your website will probably be more useful if you can get it into the google index and into some of the other search engines. If you do nothing, google and the other search engines will eventually find your website with one of its web crawling robots. For TowpathGuy's first website it took about 10-12 days for this to happen.

Google Webmaster to the Rescue

The one search engine that has a vast majority of the search engine business is Google. It turns out that it's easy to get your website registered on Google.

1. Go to www.google.com/webmaster. You'll be on a page called the Dashboard. Here you can enter your website so that you can manage it, including getting it into the google search engine.
   
2. After you enter your website's URL, you'll be at page that says "Overview" with a yellow box at the top telling you that you that the next step is to "verify your site". To do this click on the words "verify your site". You'll be offered two ways to verify -- select the "add a meta tag" and copy the short code by highlighting and typing "control-c" (hold the control key and then type c).
   
3. Go to your blog site on blogger and get into the edit mode and choose the layout tab. In the second row of tabs, select "edit html". Position the mouse just after the code which should be about 7 or 8 lines down and type control-v to paste your meta tag into your blog. Note that you are editing your theme, so if you change your theme, you'll have to repeat this step.
4. Go back to the webmaster page and click on the "Verify" button.
5. Now you'll be back at the Overview page, but now there should be a blue-bordered box telling you that you've successfully verified your site. In the box "Index Status", there are two informational paragraphs. The second paragraph tells you that you have not submitted any sitemaps, so click on the word "Sitemaps" in the column of buttons on the left hand side.
   
6. On the Sitemaps page, click on "Add a Sitemap".
7. In the selection box, choose "Add a General Sitemap" and then complete the URL in option 3 by adding "feeds/post/default" after the URL that is there.
8. The next page tells you that you've been successful and need to wait for several hours.
9. You're done!

If you go back to the Webmaster Dashboard, you can check on your website/blog to see what google's search index knows about your website. From the Overview page you can check out the Index Stats or check on the status of your Sitemaps upload. Google will fetch your sitemaps automatically, but you can also manually resubmit it from the Sitemaps page.

TowpathGuy submitted the Sitemap for this blog on 9/22/08, just before 9:00 pm EDT. Google processed the site map on 9/25/08, around 7:00 pm EDT. Thus, it took about 70 hours. However, the site map is not yet indexed. 

Step 2: Sign up at Blogger

First, go to Blogger's web site.

The Blogger web page will show you that you can "Create a Blog in 3 Steps". The first blogger step is to create a google account, which you did when you signed up for gmail in Step 1.

The second blogger step is to name your new blog. You should give some thought to this name as this name will become your url. For example, if your new blog is called, "myfavoritecat", then your blog will be accessed at myfavoritecat.blogspot.com. Blogger will then check to see if your blog name is unique. If it's not, you'll have to choose another name until you find one that someone else isn't using. Blogger will let you have several blogs under one account, so you can always change your blog's by simply opening a new account. Or, you can run more than one blog at the same time. TowpathGuy now has 3 blogs at blogger:

• TowpathGuy's Towpath Guide -- this site is the original and raison d'etre for this project.
• SimpleBicycleRepair -- this website is being developed because TowpathGuy realized that there were some simple bicycle repair issues that did not quite fit with the theme of TowpathGuy's Towpath Guide.
• This one.

The third blogger step is pick a "theme" and set up some defaults. A "theme" is the general appearance, colors, etc. of your blog. The blogger site will offer you a selection of about a dozen themes. Pick one that you like. Skip the "Advanced Options" for now. You can set those up later. If you don't like any of the offered options, you can probably find some other templates, but TowpathGuy didn't need to do this so you'll have to look elsewhere for information on how to do this.

Once you've chosen a theme you can start to blog. Or, you can fine tune your theme by selecting "Layout" from the tabbed menu that you'll be presented with. Each of the themes that you were offered earlier has 2-4 variations in colors, etc. that let you customize your appearance if you want.

You'll also want to check the Setting tab and adjust your preferences. For example, TowpathGuy turns off "Comments" so that the blog becomes passive, like an 0ld-fashioned website.

Step1: Get a Gmail Account

Blogger is a subsidiary of Google, so a gmail password is your passport to use Blogger.

Step 1 is to go to gmail and sign up for new account. Click on the big blue letters "Sign up for Gmail" in the lower right hand corner of the screen and follow the directions.

Towpathguy suggests that you have a separate gmail account for your Blogger activities so do Step 1 even if you already have a gmail account

What is "Blog to Website"

This is a blog/website (blogsite, weblog?) about using the simple blogging tools provided by blogger to produce a hybrid between a blog and website. The emphasis here is on simple.

What the difference between a blog and website?

In some ways, nothing -- both use the web, html and have an url. However, a blog is simply a special kind of website. It is organized in a way that an author can post information from time to time. Usually, the information is intended to be read in a timely way, so it presented to the readership with the most recent postings (or pages) first, i.e., in reverse chronological order. A website also has posted information, but usually the information is intended to be accessed in some way other than the order in which it was posted.

TowpathGuy started this blog because a couple of months ago, he decided to put his "hobby" on line. It's a simple hobby. He rides his bike on the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath (in central New Jersey) for both commuting and recreation. He's done this for >20 years and has learned a lot about the towpath. He decided that others should "Discover the Towpath", so started to write the TowpathGuy's Towpath Guide. Since this is a hobby, TowpathGuy needed to do this at minimal cost. The features of Blogger seemed easy to use and the cost (free) seemed ideal.

The postings of this blog will explain how a beginner found a way to work around some of the blogging features of Blogger to use it more like a website. The modifications require only a little knowledge of html which will be explained as needed.