The Creative Blog: An Enhancement to any Website

I've had my website since 1999, and if I could do it all over again, I would simply make a blog, because it is easy to put together, you can update it from anywhere, you can post everything a website can do, like words, pictures, video and people can contact you through it. I'm pretty sure I could make it work as my main website, as I've seen many people do it. But that's not what happened...I have a regular website that I've designed in Photoshop and Dreamweaver but keep a Creative Blog as an enhancement to my site.

For those of you who have never designed before, and if you are wanting quick web presence, then a blog would be a smart decision for the reasons I mentioned. I've recommended this option for many instructors and they like the option. Designers, animators or game designers, will want a main website to showcase their work, and we'll get to that later, but before we do, a good move for you is to create a "creative blog" that will be an enhancement to your future site.

A blog can be about anything and I have many (yes, I went overboard and was hooked on the idea for a while - but I've calmed down a lot), I've used them to keep notes on images and videos I see on the internet to help me with research, another keeps track of my football scores, I post animation curriculum and my favorite...I use one as a source of creative inspiration for me and my students.

This is the blog that I maintain on a weekly basis and I love it, there are lots of funs things on it that inspire me and that I like to show my students:

http://randolfs.blogspot.com/

YOU will use your creative blog in this way...when you see something cool on the internet (which is pretty often), if it inspires you to make great work, if its funny, if it energizes you, if you think its a good example of great design or animation, maybe its an artist you admire, maybe its a cool website, you will post it on this blog. When you post it, it will be available to you for as long as you have the blog, and you will find great enjoyment watching it grow as you add posts and layers of inspiration to it. It is a great feeling and it gets better when you find that somebody out there finds what you are posting helpful and inspirational too. Its awesome, its simple, it spreads love and you can do it.

Some other benefits to creating a "Creative Blog":

• It shows that you are in tune with your industry.
• That you keep current.
• It shows initiative on your part for learning a new technology.
• Many professionals in your industry keep blogs.
• These same professionals check one another's blogs.
• It shows your interests (me, I like robots and awesome demo reels).
• You can showcase works in progress, like sketchbook work.
• Or current pieces that you like, but won't necessarily place in an online gallery.
• Its dynamic, constantly changing and growing, where as your main website might not change as much.
• Posts are automatically archived so you can look at the later (sometimes years later).
• It can be easily organized with the use of labels.
  
• Oh yeah, and did I mention that its FREE?

There are many blog formats out there, but the one I am most familiar with and the one I pitch most often is Blogger. I do so because of:

• An easy interface (super easy to use)
• From a design standpoint, the templates are nice and clean (this is huge).
• Its owned by Google (Its still the number one search engine, and is not going anywhere).
• You can customize the colors to make it feel like it is part of your main website.
• You can place ads on it (we'll talk about this later - I heard Wordpress doesn't allow ads).

So go ahead, let's start by establishing webpresence by creating a blog for you. Start first by signing up for a google account. Or logon to the official blogger website, I think they are same thing.

Once you logon, establish a name for your blog, as well as a URL name. For example, my blog is called randolfs.blogspot.com, but my blog title is, "The Caged Tiger's Templar". Its nice if your blog title is somewhat creative. I usually play with word combinations to help me brainstorm great titles, so pull up Thesaurus.com to help you generate more options or keep a friend's email or phone number handy so you can run ideas by them. Don't worry if you don't find a cool name or URL, you can always change it later.

The next lesson, will be about how to customize your blog, and some of the best practices I put into place about posting images, text and videos on a blog. Save the webaddress to your blog, and we'll connect it to your homepage (this will be another lecture).

Good luck and have fun putting together your creative blog, if you have any questions, send them my way.

Do your best and have fun.