When you are starting a blog, what must you at first consider? How to run the blog, keep it secure and a lot more details should be on your mind. Here are a few starters!

If you are starting a blog, what things must you consider first? Well, here is a list to get you going, taking you from why you are blogging to blogging security.

Why do you want to blog? – It seems daft, but put a reason to it now. Are you blogging to earn an income, to aid your business or just to share your thoughts with the world? You probably know the answer, but confirm this for yourself and if there are some lesser reasons, keep them in mind later on.

What blogging platform will you use? – Blogger, WordPress.com, WordPress.org, a specialist platform or one of many others? Some are totally free, others leave you paying for hosting and some required you to pay for a lot more. Bear in mind your purpose of blogging and how that integrates. If you are adding to an existing site, then installing the blog onto the site could be best. If you want to chat then a community blog might be best. But remember not all free blogs allow advertising and so on.

How much do you want to share? – Once you start to write the information is out there and hard to revoke. Make sure you are comfortable with what you are sharing. If you are getting very personal, it might be best to use a username that does not relate to your name and avoid publishing photographs of yourself.

How secure is your blog? – After you have set up the blog, make sure that it is secure. With free hosts that probably just means choosing a very secure password. With self hosted blogs secure password, security pluggins, database backups, secure hosting and more should be considered. This might make you change your mind about your planned hosting!

What do you want the site to look like? – Is it a personal site or a business site? A business site should reflect the organisation’s reputation and outlook, but a personal site can inject some of your personality into the look. Depending on where you host the site you might find some excellent free templates to work from, especially on WordPress.org!

Where will you get traffic from? – How are you hoping people will start to find your blog? Search engine optimisation, commenting on other blogs or just being part of a community? Just because you start to write a lot of posts does not mean that you will automatically be getting lots of readers. It takes a lot of time and effort to get people visiting your blog and you will feel that you are wasting your time if you are not getting readers.

Can you take insults? – If you are getting traffic to your blog, then people may leave comments and these are not always that polite. If you cannot take insults, then it may be better to turn off all sort of commenting to protect your feelings!

There is a lot more that you can be considering when you start a blog, but this little list will do you for starters!

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