I suppose this entry marks my first real post.

Despite having a love for writing, I never quite imagined myself having a personal blog. Sure, I’ve written for others, but it’s an entirely different experience when you find yourself with a kind of creative freedom to which you’re completely unaccustomed. Without a specific direction or prompt, it’s often unnervingly difficult to write. It’s an even greater challenge to write something that is coherent and insightful.

If you’re thinking about creating a blog, these quick tips might help point you in the right direction:

If you are technically capable, buy a domain name and host your own site.

I’ve had an account at LiveJournal for a long time. Out of the various hosted blog platforms, it’s definitely among the most capable and flexible. However, nothing compares to the creative freedom offered by your very own site, hosted on a platform of your choice. It’s also a good way to avoid the disconcerting content use policies that are becoming so ubiquitous around the Web.

If you don’t roll your own software, use WordPress.

I’ve experienced the alternatives, and they aren’t in the same league. Movable Type, while capable, doesn’t feature WordPress’s signature cleanliness. It’s also written in PERL, which can cause problems in some shared hosting environments. I will say, however, that it does hold one advantage over WordPress. It generates static files (i.e., .html) or very light dynamic files (i.e., .php) by default, and can therefore accommodate many more visitors. WordPress, meanwhile, relies on a sophisticated dynamic content engine written in PHP.

WordPress, despite a couple of recent security issues, is clean, easy to customize, and intuitive. If you’re experienced with MySQL and PHP, it takes about two minutes to install. It’s one of the very few software packages I wouldn’t change anything about.

Consider the adoption of a Creative Commons license.

In this regard, I suppose that I’m a total hypocrite. I haven’t adopted a license quite yet, primarily because I’m not exactly sure what to do with my photography, nor how I’m going to distinguish between license types. As far as my original blog content is concerned, however, it’s very likely that I will select the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. It will allow other people to share my work in a non-commercial context, provided that they attribute the work to me and retain my original license on any work which is derived from my own.

If you like what you do, then respect your employer.

It is becoming increasingly common for employers to search the Web for information about their employees.

Facebook, LiveJournal, and MySpace provide business owners and human resources with an easy, quick, and reasonably accurate method by which to judge your character. Unless you’re writing with a very clever pseudonym, then your blog will also be subjected to the same type of intense scrutiny.

It’s also important to remember that certain posts may actually have legal ramifications, especially if you have signed a non-disclosure agreement with your employer. In other words, it’s a bad idea to reveal company secrets on a blog. Keep things professional.

Mind your presentation.

If your blog matures into a success, then it will be read by total strangers. They will not know you personally, and their only impression of you will stem from your blog. This rule is also true for corporate blogs, where complete professionalism is an absolute must.

If you expect to be taken seriously, then make sure that your posts are grammatically correct, and that you’ve run a spell checker against them prior to publication. A few common mistakes include the use of “you’re” and “your” in inappropriate contexts, as well as run-on sentences. I’ve also noticed some confusion regarding the appropriate placement of colons and semi-colons. These common errors have been known to undermine the credibility of even the most intelligent, well-educated people.

Update regularly.

If your blog stagnates, your readership will almost certainly decrease. You should make updates at least three times per week, if not on a daily basis. Succeed by keeping your most avid readers hooked!