So you want to create a free blog?

It’s pretty simple. I’ll walk you through the steps and give you some links to various sites with themes/plugins/tutorials to make your blog looking fresh and professional. Our result should be the blog like the picture above. I’ll step you through so you can easily create a blog like mine with all the functionality mine has to offer. And yes, it doesn’t have to cost you one cent.

First of all, what is a blog?

Many might wonder, what is a blog? Is it a personal journal? A site related to someone’s favorite hobby? In reality, a blog can be anything. You have people like JohnChow, and ShoeMoney who make money by telling you how to make money! Trust me, they are successful. They make enough money to have their blog as their only source of income. You heard me. Only source of income.

So a blog is all about making money???

No, please don’t get me wrong. Their first purposes was to simply write about their passions, their hobbies. Later on as they kept getting more traffic, they probably looked for ways to make money, and got introduced to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) among other things related to bringing traffic to their blogs. (I’ll talk about this later as it isn’t relevant to (but is important) to my post today which is about creating your own free blog.) For now, just have in mind that a blog should be about your hobbies, passions, and whatnot. If not, you will quickly lose focus and won’t know what other content to post on your site.

With that in mind, a great blog consists of great unique content. Maybe you find something interesting and perhaps haven’t found a website that truly nails your subject. Well, why not simply make a blog, that explains, talks about your subject in more detail? This way, you’ll attract visitors with same interests. This said, you need quality posts, and not quantity. You may visit a blog, and see hundreds of posts, and may see another one with only a couple. The one that will stand out will be the one with the best content. Sometimes, these posts full of quality may be short, but are right to the point.

So where do I get this free blog?

1. First of all head over to Wordpress.com
Wait? Why Wordpress?
Wordpress is what I use and millions of other bloggers use nowadays. It’s user friendly and can do about anything! With the huge magnitude of plugins, and themes that are available out to download, you can create customize your own blog to the look you want, and perform how you want it.

2. Create a free account, and create a blog. It’s pretty straightforward.
3. Once you have created your blog, you will be sent to a page containing links and tools to manager your blog! *Yes, it was that easy.
4. Your blog should end up looking like this.

Ok now what?

Simply remember, start blogging about what you love most! If your aim is to make it big and start making money, you won’t reach far. Simply start small and start blogging about your passion.

Can I see more blogs for inspiration?

Sure. Here are some blogs that have barely started and started off on the right foot!

What about finding a theme?

I’ll be posting great sites with quality themes. For meanwhile head over to WPThemez. This site posts links to various popular themes.

What about plugins?

I’ll post later what are some great plugins, meanwhile you can simply go to Wordpress.org and under Plugins, you’ll find a great variety of plugins, as well as themes!

Don’t worry, there will be more help where this came from! I’ll post later plugins/themes for wordpres as well as ways to increase traffic to your website!

Good luck!

Free Battlefield coming summer 2008

If you haven’t played any Battlefield PC game before I highly encourage you to do so. The game is highly addicting. The idea is simple. You start on a base with a flag. You must conquer the remaining territories on the map with flags on them. Then whats so hard about it? You have an opposing team doing the same! Battleheroes is aimed to be a 4 multiplayer game! Sounds promising. Can’t wait until it arrives. Check it out here.

Where can I get a previous title of battlefield to try it out?

You may download a trial version online of the first Battlefield! Don’t worry, its highly addictive! that allows you to play on one map online! Don’t worry, there are plenty of matches to keep you busy! Download here.

NES games playable online!?

Better believe it! You got a list of 100 NES games playable online!

Where?

Here!

Excerpt from DistroWatch:

“Linux Mint is one of the surprise packages of the past year. Originally launched as a variant of Ubuntu with integrated media codecs, it has now developed into one of the most user-friendly distributions on the market – complete with a custom desktop and menus, several unique configuration tools, a web-based package installation interface, and a number of different editions. Perhaps most importantly, this is one project where the developers and users are in constant interaction, resulting in dramatic, user-driven improvements with every new release.”

Why is LinuxMint a good alternative?

Where can I get LinuxMint?

Get LinuxMint here.

Is it free?

Of course! Pretty soon I’ll probably right a tutorial on how to install and remove such distros.

No Codecs Found!?

Can’t play your media since the laptop/computer you purchased doesn’t come with the right codecs? Only solution given was to purchase some codecs?

Don’t worry. You may download the K-Lite Codec Pack which will let play about 99% of all media downloaded from the internet as well as DVDs with Windows Media Player and more.

Download the Codecs here.

Free? Good?

Software for free is good? Many people think by a software being free it must be of low quality and are stressed out by trying to find out cheap solutions. Well, think again! Some of this software may be the best on the net since most of these programs such as Winamp are community based. In other words, many of its updated features are from popular demand from the users!

In the following page I posted many essential computer programs that are the equivalent to expensive software on the net! I’m going to make a detailed list of all the following:

What would I post?

Computer Programs

Anti-Virus Protection for Free

This anti-virus is easy to use, and compact. In other words, it doesn’t use up heavy resources as Norton AntiVirus, or those other pesky antivirus that bog down your system. It automatically updates its database whenever you log on to the internet so you are always protected. Highly recommended.

Abilitity to save anything as a PDF

Like everything else on my site, completely free. Once installed, creates a printer which will convert any document into a PDF.

Image Viewer that is small fast and compact

Hate to wait for your image viewing software to load up even for small images? Irfan View is your choice! Ultra compact makes viewing pictures a breeze on your computer.

Features:

View/Edit Images
Crop
View as Slideshows
View list of features here.

Download

here.

Want a program that opens quick and allows you to view PDF files? Foxit Reader is your choice!

Learn more of its features here.

Size: ~3mb
Where? Here

Want a free alternative for Microsoft Office? Open Office comes with the same programs offering the same functionality.

Writer: Word Processor (Save as PDF!)
Impress: Tool for multimedia presentations
Math: Create equations and formulas for your documents
Draw: Form a sketch, graph, and more for your applications
Calc: Spreadsheet program
Base: Manage, Create, and edit Databases

Provides same functionality as Microsoft Office, yet for free!

Your best choice. Most linux machines come with Open Office preinstalled so you can open document files, power point presentations, spreadsheets and more. Highly recommended. I have a copy on my computer.

Download free software from Microsoft. Simply sign-in with a Windows Live (Hotmail, etc) and then choose your school, and then verify your attendance . It took me no more than 3 minutes to start downloading programs. Great resource for all you college and graduate students!

List of free software

*Expression Studio
*Sql Server 2005 Express
*Sql Server Developer Edition
*Virtual PC 2007
*Visual Basic 2005
*Visual C++ 2005
*Visual C# 2005
*Visual J# 2005
*Visual Studio 2008
*Visual Web Developer 2005
*Visual Studio 2005 Professional
*Windows Server 2003
*XNA Game Studio

Go here