Overview
First we want to point out that whereas we are going to outline how to create your own blog and/or website for free, that although we initially created websites at no cost, that we did eventually migrate them over to a paid webhost (for as low as $6 per month with a one-time domain registration fee of $10).
The point is that we do not want to mislead you into thinking that you can — at no cost — create your own website with the same look and feel of our newer versions, but our original free “Google Sites” versions still exist and you can take a look at one of them for an example (the link to it is provided below).
Further, note that the sites/blogs linked to below do not have to look anything like that; the design of the layouts can be selected using a vast array of free “themes” and of course you can alter any selected theme if you so desire.
The free websites can end up looking pretty much the same or even better, they just lack a few “bells and whistles” as well as the capability to do what is termed “SEO”, short for search engine optimization, which is a method of making your website more search engine friendly and therefore more find-able and more popular. There is another side to that, called search engine marketing, which is basically marketing your site/blog, but we will not get into that (just do an online search on the terms and you can find more than you want to know about SEM).
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Creating a Free Website
For creating a no-cost website there are many free platforms, but we again have to go with the free offering from Google, known as “Google Sites”. For an example of the initial Google site that we created, you can click on this link to one of our now-obsolete and very-outdated websites (we were overly verbose back then).
Note that the original version has the Google Adsense ads in the sidebar on the right. Here is a link to the overview on Google Sites.
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Creating a Blog
For creating a blog, there are many blogging platforms that are free to use. We did some research on the offerings and our recommendation is Google’s free “blogspot” blogging platform. Click on this link for an example of a friend’s blog on the “blogger” platform. Click on this link to go to the blogger.com start page, and just follow the directions. If you are anti-Google and want to explore other free blog apps, the site at this link provides a good overview of their top 40 even though it is somewhat outdated. For whatever it’s worth, we will express our humble opinion that, as of May of 2011, ‘blogger.com’ (blogspot, link above) comes in as the best free blogging platform, followed by ‘wordpress.com‘ (not ‘wordpress.org‘ which cost$), then (debatedly) ‘livejournal.com’. Some others rising to the top in the cyberworld are ‘tumblr.com’, ‘posterous.com’, and ‘squidoo.com’. The only constant with online apps is that they change, and we will try to keep this updated as best we can, but there is a big bad world full of meanies out there that seem to keep us from such niceties…
Creating your own site/blog just ain’t that tough to do, it can be as easy as using a word processor (as long as you keep it simple). And it can all be done without using “programming” languages, or “coding”, although a basic knowledge of some HTML can be helpful (not a logic language, just used to affect how content looks). So, come on, give it a shot, add your voice to cyberspace, raise some irreverant muckracking heck, and see what you can get going… OR: if you know someone else with some time on their hands (maybe too much time such that they pester you) let them know about this option, it could change their lives (and yours) and help the world out.
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Monetizing
Google has a facility called AdSense that you can use with your blog/site that allows the display of advertisements on your site for which you can receive nominal payments. Click on this link if you would like to see some information on AdSense (there is a help function at the bottom of the logon page if you would like to find out how it works) and if you would care to see how it looks in action, you can click on this link to the now obsolete original “WisBits” website (the ads are in the right sidebar). Note: do NOT expect to make much money from Adsense, if any. Same thing with “contributions”, times are tough and people are holding onto their money these days…
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Paid Members Only?
If you feel that the content of your website is highly valuable, you might consider converting it to a paid membership site. However, this cannot be done with the free applications like Google Sites, is a little more complicated, would entail some minimal basic “coding” with HTML (a simple webpage formatting “language”), and would require migrating the website to a paid webhosting service which will cost less than one hundred dollars per year for a decent webhost.
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Reciprocal Links
If you give this a try, feel free to send us questions if you run into any problems. And, once you get your site/blog up and running, remember us as a prospect for your blogroll list of blogs/sites if you happen to have a site/blog in any way similar to ours. Then, let us know about it and we will consider a reciprocal link to your site/blog — fyi, the more “incoming links” the better the “page rank” and search engine visibility…
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Disclaimer
We must warn that if you decide to go the free website route, the Google Sites app can become problematic.
What we experienced was that often when using the Google Sites WYSIWYG (the acronym for “what you see is what you get”, pronounced “wizzywig”) editor that we eventually ran into brick walls trying to change or enter text.
What we finally determined on our own (there is no technical support with it as of when we published this) was that the editor generates some horribly convoluted HTML code (which you cannot see in WYSIWYG mode) which eventually (after numerous changes/updates) the HTML code becomes corrupted such that you simply cannot make some/further changes.
The only solution is to then switch to the HTML code editor and attempt strip out all of the bad code (not an easy task for a novice), and of course this would negate our contention that no coding is necessary with the free apps.
We have not used other free website apps so we cannot recommend a good alternative. We also have noted that supposedly ALL online WYSIWYG editors have the exact same problems. This is the second reason that we decided to migrate away from the free website apps and move to a paid webhost where their editors are considerably less flaky and much more tolerable.
Beware that this flaw could be a show stopper for anyone that is not reasonably proficient at logical problem determination/resolution. Worded differently, anyone that has a tendency to “get stuck” or frustrated with surfing the net or with computer “apps” would be best to avoid Google Sites and maybe stick with a “blogspot” blog.
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If you have any questions or suggestions you may send us an email at jeb@saveusnow.org.
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