Customer Reviews

Create Your Own Blog: 6 Easy Projects to Start Blogging Like a Pro

5 star:		(30)
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3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The philosophical question of the day is: if you don't blog, micro-blog, or social network, do you exist? Certainly not to the multimillions, or billions, who at least read postings from blogging and social network sites like Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed.

Tris Hussey is one such blogger and is probably more intense about it than most. He is a longtime blogger, educator and speaker, and writer of blog related topics. His background and enthusiasm for the topic and casual, easy-going writing style serve him well in authoring "Creating Your Own Blog: Six Easy Projects to Start Blogging like a Pro."

Even though online software tools make it easy for nearly anyone to start blogging those who want to do it well for personal or professional reasons will benefit from the guidance found in this book. Hussey is comprehensive in his approach: he describes blogging as essentially storytelling and is enthusiastic and inspiring about it; he gives a short history of storytelling online via simple to very sophisticated tools; he details how to set up, install, and configure both hosted and self-hosted sites; and he even shows how to make money while blogging.

The meat of the book is in chapters 5 through 9 where he details how to set up and maintain personal, business, podcasting, video, and portfolio blogs. In chapter 10 he explains "online life streaming" where blogs, micro-blogs, social networking sites, and mobile communications converge into a mash of running digital history in real-time--for those not concerned about their life activities being stored permanently in searchable online databases.

Managing all of this does get complicated and Hussey is adept at explaining the how and why of spending the time to do it well and right. The book contains information on intellectual property issues and Digital Rights Management, privacy, search engine optimization, controlling spam and abusive commenters, as well as examples of blogs he admires or believes are models of good blogging.

Instead of covering all topics in depth, he shortcuts by detailing better choices and practices from his own experiences. He provides express recommendations on blogging hosts (he likes WordPress best,) hardware (microphones) and software choices. His emphasis in such choices is on low-cost and ease-of-use options. There is enough material to satisfy those with advanced needs and capabilities. The mashing of blog; photo, audio and video posting sites;and social networking sites is especially worthwhile for serious online communicators.

Hussey writes from experience as one of the earliest bloggers and one of the more prolific ones. He writes with some humor and in an easy-going style that is easy to follow and absorb. The book is heavily illustrated with screenshots of blog pages, websites, and applications along with some graphic illustrations and photos of hardware. There are stylized "Tips, Notes, New Terms, Cautions, an Idea Galleries" throughout. I found many of the screenshot illustrations to be too dark or too finely printed to be useful. Younger eyes may not have a problem.

This is a very good book for those thinking about starting blogging for business or personal reasons.

FTC disclosure (16 CFR Part 255): The reviewer has accepted without solicitation a reviewer's copy of this book which is his to keep. He intends to provide an honest, independent, and fair evaluation of the book in all circumstances.

I have a blog (pinkpeppers) and named it because I figured a color with a vegetable would be easy to remember. Tris Hussey starts his book talking about naming your blog, what to do- something memorable, what not to do- when run together does the name become something unfortunate.

My blog was created by someone else and I often wish I knew how to add a click on box, add the wall paper, basically how to change it in any fashion without bothering my site manager.

Here's help! This book has an entire section on "Tweaking Your Blogs Setup" Perfect!

The first three chapters will help you install and start your blog. I am very glad for the pictures that walk you through the processes as he explains them. And what about the difference say, between WordPress and DIY? It comes down to time and money, $10-$15/yr. for WordPress whereas DIY can be $10-$15/mo. Of course there's a tradeoff, on WordPress you are limited to certain themes and you can not use additional plug-ins. WordPress is a great start though.

This book also covers the general tell all blogger vs. the business blog and the various options for each. Did ya wanna make money? This gives you the help, directly and indirectly.

He gets into multimedia, podcasting your own on your own, video blog posts you do.

I like the books set up, I like the "notes," and "new terms," and "tips," separated and highlighted throughout the text.

Tris Hussey is a professional blogger and leading expert and for just the price of this book, you can pick his brain. Good Deal!

If you use Wordpress for your blog, this will be a very helpful book. If you use blogger or another progam/engine, not so much. I'm a blogger user, so the book is peripherally useful to me, but not helpful with "technical difficulties".

The idea behind this book was good, but I did not like the tone, format or half the material. There's very little in the first half of this book that you couldn't just as easily (and probably more quickly) figure out by signing up for a blog and using the built-in tutorials. Anyone with common sense and a little business experience has half the business section already figured out - don't post things you'll regret later, provide a united front if more than one person is doing the blogging, provide all the same info you would in hard copy, etc.

Although there is some potentially helpful information later in the book on how-to's for things like video blogging and pod-casts, I found the author's writing style distracting. He admits that he blogs and writes the way he speaks, and I did not find that to be a good thing! Words that are left out, punctuation used that doesn't match the sentence and other idiosyncrasies really stand out and are annoying. I recommend skipping this one.

The material in Create Your Own Blog is well written and helpful. However, each section covers a completely different topic. As an overview of what you can do with a blog it's excellent. I recommend this to people who need to get a basic overview of the subject or those who are looking to create a blog and want to find out what a blog can do. Each of the projects, focuses on a different type of blog, so once you have your blog up you would probably want a more focused book on your particular type.

The book is set up in several chapters/sections and is easy to jump about to the topic you need. It begins with the basic concept of blogs and how to start one, and covers the various blog hosting sites (Blogger, WordPress, Live Journal, etc.) and their good and bad points. The author freely admits to being more favorable to WordPress and much of the "how to" discussion features that platform as opposed to blogger - but that was fine with me as I'm just switching to WP.

Other chapters include writing posts (and I sooooo agree with keeping the post and paragraphs short), creating conversion, building community as well as how to deal with trolls, spam and other unwelcome guests. The remaining chapters are dedicated to a several different blog types (personal/podcast/Business/Video/Portfolio/Lifestream/Making Money), so you can read those chapters if that's the type of blog you are planning or skip it if not. *pout* No book blog chapter.

This is easy to read with plenty of images of what you'll see on the screen, all explained in simple non-geeky language. I liked the feature boxes with additional tips and don't do's (like not going overboard on the widgets, it makes your page take too long to load). I plan on keeping this handy for reference and ideas as I expand my blog further.

For years, I toyed with the idea of having a blog to share some of my creative projects and eventually to promote my craft business. I bought this book hoping to read it during my commute and have a functional blog within a few weeks. It absolutely gave me the motivation I needed to get started (and to meet that goal). Tris Hussey writes in a very conversational tone which was both easy to read and motivating for me. It was almost like having a friend giving you advice, thus compelling you to actually take action.

As you may guess from the title, this book is geared towards someone without a programming background. It is also obviously geared towards someone who is seeking this information in book form (like me!) rather than someone who would want to do the research themselves online.

The chapters are:
It's all about storytelling
Welcome to the blogosphere: Planning your first blog
Installing and setting up your first blog
Writing and creating a conversation
Building community
Creating a personal blog
Creating a business blog
Creating a podcast blog
Video blogging
Creating a portfolio blog
Creating your own online lifestream
Making money through your blog

What I liked about the book:
As noted above, the book includes chapters on both personal and business blogs. While some of the content in these chapters are repetitive, the distinctions, especially regarding voice, for a business vs. a personal blog are quite helpful.

Tris is the perfect foil for those of us who would let perfectionism get in the way of accomplishing something. He basically encourages you to just get started and not to worry too much about being perfect.

The book provided an overview of podcasting and video podcasting, as well as text and image based blogging.

In each chapter, Tris walks you through terms, set up, and shares links to free or low-cost online resources which would be helpful.

The book is very "action" oriented, with activities you can do within each chapter to get your blog up and running.

There is a good balance between explaining tech terminology which the reader might be unfamiliar with without being condescending.

What you may not like about the book:
Tris prefers self-hosted WordPress blogs (which is what I ended up using) and most of the book slants in that direction, as other reviewers have already noted. This was fine for me, because the book walked me through the steps of setting up a self-hosted WordPress blog. However, if you will be using another format, there is limited focus on the set up details.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book if you need a good kick in the pants for starting a blog!

I love those books for "Dummies." They are simple and to the point. This book reminds me of them. I am interested in blogging and in reading this book I enjoyed the simplicity of the advice and how-to tips, etc. Suggestions of what to use, how to do it, and what not to do were plentiful.

And things are so clearly arranged. Very nice format from someone who knows what it is all about. I will be following the advice here and feel that I won't go wrong.

While this book is geared for someone new to blogging, I also think that there are tips here for everyone. Nothing like having someone experienced leading the way, no matter how much you have done it, there is something someone else has discovered that could be of interest.

A very nice and useful resource with plenty of tips, suggestions and places to go and things to use.

A weblog or blog for short is nothing more than a journal posted online so that others can read it or experience the data. There are so many blogs and so much is written in them that they are now collectively known as the "blogosphere" and the blogosphere is now a fundamental component of the national political discourse. Software packages make it very easy to make a blog at whatever level of complexity that you desire and that is the basis for this book.
The first four chapters cover the basics of what blogging is, how to create a basic blog and how to build a community that will want to interact with your blog. The six blog projects outlined in this book are:

*) Creating a personal blog
*) Creating a business blog
*) Creating a podcast blog
*) Adding video to your blog
*) Creating a portfolio blog
*) Creating a lifestream blog

The final chapter covers some of the possible ways that you can make money from your blog.
Although the book may be considered rather short when so many areas of blogging are covered, the reality is that there is some repeated text due to overlapping coverage. The lack of length is also due to the fact that with the capability of modern blog engines, it is very simple to set up and maintain a blog.
While the projects are indeed easy to understand, that does not mean the blogs are limited in value or use. The detail is sufficient and so clearly stated that even the person with a limited understanding of computing can follow them and create their own blog that provides all the content the creator wants to share.

When I requested this book, I was hoping for a book very different than what this is. The title and subtitle to me sounded like this book would be about creating a blog and then doing 6 different things (projects) to/with it. That is not what this book is. Tris' word choice is misleading. After I realized that, I began reading his introduction. This sentence stopped me in my tracks. "After a short while as a lab geek, and realizing that at 25 I had maxed out my career potential, I left academia to go back to the front lines of tech support." p. 2 Goodness! Maxed out at 25! I remember being 25 and recently had a friend who was 25. She thought she knew everything. She didn't. I say that because I can see now how much I didn't know at 25. When Tris said this, it bothered me because my husband works with several people who think that they know a lot more than him. Things like this statement come out of their mouths though they have far less experience and knowledge. Yes, I would like the author of a book I read about blogging to be very knowledgeable, but I'd rather read a book by a humble person, than a prideful one. Some people might read this review and think I'm pulling a needle out of a haystack. I chose to quote this statement because it was a good example of why I didn't resonate with how the author wrote this book and his style of writing and his tone.

This book is about making 6 different types of blogs. These different types are the 6 projects--the projects are not 6 things you can do to one blog. Tris is a fan of Wordpress. He makes that claim up front. But, if you use another blog engine, his advice won't be very applicable. It isn't very helpful for me since I use Blogspot. I don't consider this book a beginning book about blogging because a beginning book would be much more helpful if it gave more detailed coverage of how to create a blog. Tris breezes very quickly through this part and he advocates strongly purchasing a domain and installing software to facilitate your blogging. I have never used such software and even after reading his description, I don't think it's really necessary. It's optional and could be helpful, I suppose, but not necessary to do prior to creating a blog.

I have been blogging for a year and a half. I don't blog because I want great stats. Tris' assumption is that everyone starts blogging for the stats. Most friends that I have who blog do it because there is a small niche group of people that they want to reach. I review books for 6 publishers as a hobby, not for income. I have no desire to pay for anything associated with my blog since I simply do it for fun. I blog using Blogspot. At one point, I tried Wordpress, but you have pay for everything--even to be able to use different fonts.

What was I most hoping for? Advice/websites to go to for widgets, fonts, backgrounds, etc. There isn't any of that. He writes a few brief paragraphs about it and doesn't list any resources.
I was also hoping for appendices with helpful information--possible lists of blog engines, sites to buy a domain name, etc. There weren't any appendices in this book and each thing I've tried to look up in the index hasn't been in it. That is frustrating to me.

One last issue. In the section where the author addresses making money from blogs, he includes several possibilities of how to do that. But, he makes no mention of taxes. What about taxes? If you earn money, then it is subject to taxes by the IRS.

I noticed that a lot of people like this book and I read their reviews. As a blogger who blogs simply because I enjoy it and not for profit or for bragging rights, I don't think this is a very helpful book. The author's purpose and his own views of blogging are incongruous with my own.