Hello Old Lad!
I’ve had a couple of emails about my Why start your own blog in 2025 post. Both were similarly themed:
- What software do you recommend?
- What’s the easiest way to get started with a blog?
Now usually I’d recommend a static site generator. But, if you’re wanting to just dip your toe in the water and see if having a blog is right for you, that’s a lot of upfront work. Potentially enough to make you abandon the whole idea. I wasn’t having that. So I had a little think, did a bit of research on the internet, and then remembered blogger.com.
Even though I haven’t been on the site for years, there was my profile. Exactly as I’d left it!
As you can see from the screenshot above, I had planned to conquer the internet with my Money Making Ideas1 and Learn Touch Typing sites. Oh, the silly (and lazy) boy I was. Of course I had to look to see what rubbish I’d put on there:
I told you I was lazy. Nada. No wonder I’m still not rich.
How Easy is Blogger to Use?
Very. I set up a new blog: Burton on Trent Stuff, picked a blogspot subdomain for it to live: burton-on-trent.blogspot.com and there it was! So I added a test post
The web interface is very straightforward. You’ve got a pane on the left for creating new posts and pages, and some fiddling bits and bobs. At the bottom is helpful button to see how your blog looks:
The rest of the page is a list of your posts or pages.
Can I Backup, Move, Delete a Blogger Blog?
In the interests of science, I decided to sacrifice one of my Blogger blogs (that had no posts). Clicking on delete blog shows this dialogue:
Thanks! I won’t bother this time though, Google. I’m sure I’ll survive without a backup of my empty blog!
As for exporting a blog, according to Wordpress everything should be tickety-boo (screenshot from above link):
Use as a Backup Blog!
Another use case for Blogger is as a backup site in case something happens to your main site. I’ve set up s1m0nh.blogspot.com for just this purpose. I know s1m0nh is a silly subdomain but that’s my fallback if simonh has been taken. If they’re both gone, I just go with:
whydoeseveryoneinsistontakingmyusernames
That one’s always available. Please do not steal it.
You could also use your blogspot.com site for comments, or as a contact page. It took me a few minutes to find out how, but it’s actually simple.
On the Blogger main page, click on Layout, then click on Add a Gadget (to the area of the page you want it displayed), find the one that says Contact form and click it:
Then, back on the main site, you’ll now see the contact form widget (where you can also turn it off or rename it by clicking the pen icon):
Finally, click on view blog and you should now see your contact form on your blogspot.com site:
Of course, I don’t take anything for granted, so I sent a test email
Afterword
I’ve got to hand it to Google. It still does the job of setting up a blog, adding posts, editing posts and all that good stuff very well. Yeah, there are lots of new, shiny, hip options today, but for getting something up and running in five minutes, I don’t think anything else can beat Blogger.
You can set up a blog, subdomain, contact page, blog comments in five minutes! If anyone knows anything quicker than that, shoot me an email (or use my blogspot contact page).
Updates
2025-01-05: Add Blogger logo and move profile photo down page
2025-01-04: Add section about Using blogger as a backup blog
2025-01-02: Add section about Backing up, moving, deleting a blog
Footnotes
1 Anyone old enough to remember Griz and his make money online blogspot site? I think he inspired this…