How to use Blogger.com to create a genealogy and family history blog

Main contributor: Jenny Hawran

Preserving and sharing family stories is an important part of documenting your family's history. Blogging offers a universal platform to educate on a genealogy topic, preserve memories, and connect with like-minded individuals across the globe. Blogs are great "cousin-bait" and can be searchable using keywords and surnames. People who read your blog can also subscribe to it and get a notification whenever you update it.

In this article, we’ll show you a beginners guide on how to create and publish a family history blog using the free blogging tool, Blogger. Blogger, owned by Google, is known for its user-friendly interface and simplicity, making it a good starting point for new bloggers.

Create Your blog

To create a blog post on Blogger, follow these steps:

Go to Blogger.com. If you are not logged into your Google account, click on Sign-In

If you are already logged into your Google account, select the Blogger icon in your Google App Launcher.

Choose a name for your blog, then click NEXT

Choose a URL for our blog. We recommend using the title of your blog if it is available. Click NEXT

Confirm how you want your name displayed. Click NEXT

From your Blogger dashboard, Click on New Post to begin drafting your content.

Compose your blog post using the built-in text editor, and incorporate images or multimedia to bring your storytelling to life.

Preview your post to ensure everything looks like you want it to look.

Click on "Publish" to make your post live for the world to see.

Customize your blog

Theme

To choose a different theme, Go back to your Blogger Dashboard and select Theme from the left navigation panel. There are many themes to choose from. You want your blog to reflect your personality or the overall theme of your blog.

You have three choices here:

Click on Preview to see what your blog would look like with you new theme.
Click Customize to see options to change.
Once you have chosen a theme, click on Apply

Layout

The different parts of your blog layout are called Gadgets. You can click the edit button of the gadgets to see what options you have for each of them. You can also click and drag to rearrange the gadgets. To add a gadget to your layout click on the Add a Gadget plus sign. A pop-up will give you options on what you can add.

Settings

This area gives you the overall settings of your blog. Here you can make changes, such as making your blog private instead of public, or turning off comments.

Share your blog

Now that your blog is published there are a few different ways you can share it:

Cut and paste the URL of the blog into an email to your family and friends
While signed into your Blogger Dashboard, click on View Blog at the bottom of the left navigation panel. From there you can click on the More dropdown at the very top of the page of your blog to see the different ways to share it.
To share individual blog posts, go to the end of your blog post and select one of the sharing icons there.

Explore more about How to use Blogger.com to create a genealogy and family history blog