What is a blog?

A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.

Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.

In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.

Since Blogger was launched in 1999, blogs have reshaped the web, impacted politics, shaken up journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with others.

And we're pretty sure the whole deal is just getting started.

Publish your thoughts

A blog gives you your own voice on the web. It's a place to collect and share things that you find interesting— whether it's your political commentary, a personal diary, or links to web sites you want to remember.

Many people use a blog just to organize their own thoughts, while others command influential, worldwide audiences of thousands. Professional and amateur journalists use blogs to publish breaking news, while personal journalers reveal inner thoughts.

Whatever you have to say, Blogger can help you say it.

Engage your friends

Blogging is about more than just putting your thoughts on the web. It's about connecting with and hearing from anyone who reads your work and cares to respond. With Blogger, you control who can read and write to your blog — let just a few friends or the entire world see what you have to say!

Blogger Comments let anyone, anywhere, offer feedback on your posts. You can choose whether you want to allow comments on a post-by-post basis, and you can delete any comments you don't like.

Access Controls let you decide who can read and who can write to your blog. You can use a group blog with multiple authors as an excellent communication tool for small teams, families and other groups. Or as a single author, you can create a private online space for collecting news, links, and ideas, to keep to yourself or share with as many readers as you want.

Blogger Profiles let you find people and blogs that share your interests. Your Blogger Profile, where you can list your blogs, your interests, and more, lets people find you (but only if you want to be found).

Design your blog

Whether you're starting your blog or just think it's time to give your existing blog a facelift, Blogger's user-friendly editing tools help you easily design a great-looking page.

Templates — Our collection of templates will get you started with an attractive site right away without you having to learn any HTML, though Blogger also allows you to edit your blog's HTML code whenever you want.

Custom colors and fonts — When you're ready to take the next step, you can further customize our templates to create a design that perfectly reflects you and your blog.

Drag-and-drop page elements — Blogger's simple drag-and-drop system lets you easily decide exactly where your posts, profiles, archives and other parts of your blog should live on the page.

Post photos

Sometimes you just want to share a photo. There's a button for uploading photos in the Blogger interface. Just click the photo button to upload a photo from your computer. If the photo you'd like to put on your blog is already on the web that's fine too. Just tell us where it is.

You can also send camera phone photos straight to your blog while you're on-the-go with Blogger Mobile.

Go Mobile

Blogger Mobile lets you send photos and text straight to your blog while you're on-the-go. All you need to do is send a message to go@blogger.com from your phone. You don't even need a Blogger account. The message itself is enough to create a brand new blog and post whatever photo and text you've sent.

Later, if your want to claim your mobile blog or switch your posts to another blog, just sign in to go.blogger.com and use the claim code Blogger sent to your phone.

We support most popular mobile carriers in the US and worldwide. If Blogger Mobile is unavailable from your provider, you can still send posts to your blog using Mail-to-Blogger.

Get started

The fastest way to understand blogging is to try it out. We've worked really hard to make it really easy for you. Just click the link below, and you can be part of the phenomenon that's transforming web and media to a participatory activity in less than five minutes. Seriously.

What will happen then? Who knows. It might be fun, though.

And remember: Blogger is totally free, and if you have trouble, just click the Help button from any screen, and you can find the answer you're looking for—or even ask our dedicated support staff.

[via Blogger.com]