Opening a Blogger Account

So, you want a blog, but don't want the hassle of installing one on your site? Then you can use Blogger. Just open an account and begin typing away. You can host the blog on their free space, but why have a convoluted URL that has to be linked to from every page, when you have a web-hosting account right here?

So, choose to "FTP it to your server". When it asks for information, just fill the blanks with garbage, and move on to the next step. When you are done, you will be at your setup page. At the top right, click on "Settings" and fill in the info I have described here.

For publishing options, you should choose:

Publish - via SFTP (this is SECURE FTP . If you use regular FTP, it will work, but people can read your login and password if they intercept the data (not that hard if you know what you're doing)

Publish server - 64.191.90.88:4832 (this is the IP address and port for SFTP -- if you plan on using FTP anyway you would put "ftp.yourdomain.com" replacing yourdomain.com with your domain.)

URL -- http://www.yourdomain.com/blog.html (This is the full URL for your blog page. If you want the blog to be the first page on your site, make this http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html )

Path -- www/

Server Login - (Your hosting account login for my server)
Password - (Your hosting account password)

As for the other pages:

Archiving -
Archive -- Your choice
Archive Index File -- Your choice, I recommend no.
Archive Path -- www/
Archive URL - can be left blank or set to something else, I recommend blank.
Archive filename -- something easy to remember, like "archives.html"

Site feed --
Publish site feed - please select yes. if you do, then I can publish exceprts of your blog on my main page.
Descriptions -- Full or Short - Full is easier for me to work with for publishing on my site.
Site Feed Server Path - www/
Site feed filename -- You can choose anything. I recommend "atom.xml" as it will make life easier.
Site feed URL -- http://www.yourdomain.com/atom.xml -- this is the easiest place for everyone.

A few notes --
If you plan on placing your blog in its own directory, you will have to add the directory name after all the Paths and in the URLs - like www/blog/ and http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/index.html

As usual, if you have any questions, post away!

Uhm, yeah. Thanks for the info Chris. I'm gonna do this just after I pick my head up off the floor and stick it back on my shoulders with a little duct tape or silicone sealant. I appreciate the info but more than that I appreciate your accomodation of further questions - because there will be some.

opening a blogger account is super simple . . . especially with what chris has mapped out in this post . . . you'll see it much clearer once you start setting up your account . . .

chris . . . thanx for the little tutorial . . . i tried everything i could think of to get my blogger archives to work . . . the active path field was really screwing me up . . . they work now . . .

also . . . i've tried to use the sftp upload from blogger . . . it keeps giving me a undefined socket error . . .

It's a tough call. I suspect that "undefined socket error" is referring to the FTP address. Re-check your SFTP address, or "Public server"

It should be:
64.191.90.88:4832

The first four sets of digits are the IP address and the four numbers after the colon are the port number.

I just tried it again with my test blogger account and it worked, so if this doesn't fix it, recheck all of your settings, it's probably just a dumb mistyping.