Blogging – how do you do it?
The key to blogging is making it easy. If you have to go through a load of steps to put something up then you won’t get into it.
The tools
Initially I use custom built plugin for Omea (www.jetbrains.com ) this allowed me to cross post blog items and also allowed me to put standard code for tracking etc. Omea isn’t being developed and with the move away from newsgroups (something else I used it for), I’ve stopped using it preference for Windows Live Writer http://explore.live.com/windows-live-writer
The reason is that its really really simple and has lots of plug ins. What’s more one of the biggest plus points is handling of images.
If you know about html you know that html doesn’t contain the image but references an image. This is the same for blog posts and so you need to have something that can upload your images somewhere and then upload the blog post referencing the image. Live Writer does this seamlessly.
So then comes the question of getting the screen shots.
1. Print screen – this is the heavy weight option and captures the whole desktop or the active window and puts it in the clipboard
2. If using windows 7 there is a snipping tool. That allows you to capture a portion of the screen. The nice thing is that once you snip it launches a tool where you can edit the image with simple drawing tools. To launch the tool type snipping in the start box.
3. However I use snagit from techsmith. This tool takes snipping to another level. Its very similar to the snipping tool but with loads more options.
You can put borders/finishes around the image
You’ve got callouts (notice the torn finish applied from selecting the option above)
Highlighting options and much more
The content
Now you have the tool you need content.
You can write long blog posts but don’t expect them to take a few minutes. A good detailed blog post that doesn’t mislead and is accurate can take hours to produce.
Initially keep it simple. I started off just writing short notes about things I found. Especially error messages and the resolution I found. People find these very useful.
Once you’ve got the knack then you can write long essays. But, and this is my view and possibly not held by others, in writing posts you are putting information out in the wild that people will act upon. The longer the post the more credibility it holds. So you, as a blogger, have responsibility in making sure it is accurate. You will likely be told if it isn’t, don’t take that the wrong way and take any advice given onboard. There are many people out their that will help you.
Where to blog
The final thing about blogging is where to blog, it helps to blog amongst others so that you content can be read in aggregated feeds, but most sites now allow cross posting/syndication of blogs so you need to decide if you want to be on your own or part of the crowd. If you want blog then we can provide you a blog at http://sqlblogcasts.com others that can help are Adam Machanic at http://sqlblog.com Steve Jones at http://sqlservercentral.com Tony at http://simple-talk.com or you could go with the more generic sites like https://www.blogger.com/start or http://home.spaces.live.com
Its very easy to blog, so get blogging