How to setup your first blog

I was asked this weekend at devLink how one would setup their first blog.  So after explaining it, I realized that I knew a lot of people without a blog that continue to offer me insight into certain things.  I have put together a list of things that one must take to have a blog.

1. Determine if you need a blog. 
   • You need a blog if you have an opinion.  If you have knowledge that you'd like to share.  Whether that knowledge is how you optimized the performance of your distributed SOA implementation at you latest client or how your recipe to the sugar cookie that went over really well at the holiday party.
2. Get a name for your blog.
   • Every blog needs a name.  The name of my blog is "RickDoes.Net";  clever, I know.  If you have a nickname, use it, otherwise use your actual name.  www.JamescBender.com; www.brianhprince.com; www.jeffblankenburg.com are some good examples.  I have also purchased www.rickkierner.com that redirects to this blog.  I personally use www.godaddy.com for my domain registration.  To get a domain name, you're going to drop a few bucks a year ($10-$20) to keep that name.  If you are looking for an even lower cost entry to the blogosphere, no problem.  Go to www.wordpress.com, www.blogspot.com, www.typepad.com, or <Enter blog hosting engine here/>.  You can setup a blog name at one of these service providers for free.
3. Host your blog
   • A blog is a series of data elements or files that get served.  For that reason, you have to host that data somewhere.  You basically have two options here. 
     • You can setup a blog at a hosted blog engine (wordpress, blogspot, typepad, or whatever)
     • You can install a third party blog engine software package at your hosted domain.  This will be additional cost for the web site storage space and optionally a database.  Here are some software packages available for blog hosting.  At this time, I use SubText
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4. Publish Content
   • It doesn't matter how much  you post.  It doesn't matter what you post.  Just post what you want to share. People who care will subscribe, and people who don't...won't.  Your posts will be indexed by google and some day someone will use your post to help solve whatever problem they are working on because you were able to solve it first.  Isn't that nice of you :)
5. Optional tips:
   • Scott Hanselman put together a list of 32 things to do so that your blog doesn't suck
   • Tag your posts
   • Use FeedBurner
   • User Google Analytics