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Gardening Blogs

• Message 1. 

  Posted by garyhobson (U11055016) on Thursday, 27th May 2010

  Setting up a blog is a good way to display your garden photos, and also to tell the story of your garden, as it develops.
  
  You can weave the pictures and narrative together. It looks better and is more interesting than a slideshow.
  
  You can also talk about anything else at all that interests you. You don't have to consider moderators or getting off-topic, and you can say whatever you like.
  
  The Blogging Community
  ==================
  Blogs are international. I get far more comments on my blog from people from the USA than from Britain.
  
  There is also a large international garden blogging community called Blotanical. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of gardening blogs on there. Have a look at this:
  
  
  But you don't have to join Blotanical. Blotanical is actually a social networking site. It tends to be aimed more at ladies who like to chat.
  
  Blogspot/Blogger
  ============
  There are various 'hosts' for blogging. Blogspot is the most popular. Blogspot is the same thing as Blogger. A few people use Wordpress.
  
  Blogspot/Blogger is run by Google, so it's very reliable. And it's completely free. There is no advertising.
  
  Getting Started
  ===========
  Just go to www.blogger.com, and follow the instructions.
  
  I've forgotten what the instructions actually said, but it was very easy. The introduction says you can have your blog up and running within 5 minutes. You have to choose a suitable name that you'd like to be known by.
  
  You do need to create a Google account. You need to have a mobile telephone number in order to do that. Blogger tries to send an SMS message to that phone, to make sure you're a real person.
  
  It gives you a little window, just like entering a post on here, and you type away, and then click on 'Publish', and that's it.
  
  Photos
  =====
  You can include photos anywhere within the post. You can either use existing photos that you might have on PhotoBucket, by quoting the URL, or you can upload new photos directly into the post.
  
  Uploading photos works just like loading photos onto PhotoBucket. The pictures that you load into Blogger are actually stored on Picasa, which is also owned by Google. Picasa is very similar to PhotoBucket. Blogger automaticaly generates a Picasa account for you.
  
  Social Networking
  =============
  There's also a whole world of social networking around blogs. You don't need to use this, but most people seem to find it very useful. (This is a much larger thing than Blotanical).
  
  There is a concept called Following, where you can 'follow' other blogs. You can see a list of blogs I'm following down the right hand side of my blog. In Blogger you get a regular digest of all the lastest posts that those people make.
  
  It's quite interesting to click on a blog that someone is following, and then perhaps, click on a blog that that person is following.... you can exlore huge areas of stuff. There is a theory called 'six degrees of separation' meaning that everyone in the world can be linked to anyone else in the world in just 6 steps. Following these blog links is a bit like that.
  
  The majority of gardening blogs do tend to be parochial - they generally just link to other similar gardening blogs - people who they have become friends with. My blog happens to be a bit more 'eclectic'. So it follows all manner of blogs.
  
  You can pick up 'followers' - that is people who are following your blog. And you can visit their pages, and see what blogs they follow... etc, etc.
  
  You can also follow blogs 'secretly', simply by not making it public. (And people can follow you without you knowing about it too.)
  
  Google
  =====
  You can get your blog added to Google. That doesn't happen automatically. You need to do that manually, if you want it. Quite a lot of peole who come to my blog are actually looking for 'Jousting'. Just because I once did a page about it.
  
  Examples
  =======
  My example blog is here:
  
  
  And there's also Wisteria and Cow Parsley:
  
  
  [About which I was once rather rude, but only because I was being wound up by a third party. Sorry!]
  
  It's a bit like getting to use PhotoBucket. The whole idea seems formidable before you start. But once you've done it, there's nothing to it.
  
  The best thing is to have a go...
  

  Link to this forum: Gardening Blogs

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by LeadFarmer (U13864996) on Thursday, 27th May 2010

  Thanks Gary for posting this. Wouldnt mind creating one for myself. Ill have a good read through it all this evening.

  Link to this forum: Gardening Blogs

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