Blogging 101: An Overview of Blogging Tools

Over the past five years in the Internet world, blogging has spread like wild fire; particularly, in the past one to two years. Anyone who wants to be visible on the Internet knows that in order to gain popularity online, you need to blog. But, when you're just starting out, it's difficult deciding how you can accomplish that.

Do you have your topic figured out? If not, you'll want to do that before you continue into the big bad world of blogging. Once you have that, you have to step out deeper into the unfamiliar world of technology.

The fastest and easiest way to get a blog setup is through a website that will host it for you. Here are some of my favorite and more popular websites -

www.livejournal.com - I've been blogging there since before blogging became a buzzword. If you're looking to start a more personal blog that will which a large community of Internet users around the globe, this might be the best choice for you.

www.xanga.com - This is also a good place to create a blog with more personal content. When I first started there, it wasn't as popular as LiveJournal, but it has since gained popularity and is at least close to having a large community of Internet users like LiveJournal.

www.myspace.com - MySpace is not only a good place to blog, but it provides many other important social networking tools. If you are a musician, comedian, filmmaker, writer, or in some other business, MySpace would be an excellent place for you to start. While it's extremely popular with teenagers, in the past year I've seen the MySpace community grow in leaps and bounds. You can find just about any kind of business there that you never knew existed.

www.wordpress.com - Word Press has also gained popularity in the past couple of years. It's based on their own templates that you can also download and install for free on your own web space (we'll discuss the option later).

The important thing to remember about all of these websites is that they are very fast and easy to get started. So, if you're looking for a quick introduction to blogging, then I highly suggest that you start with one of these places.