Blog help

Fotophreak4c

Hey guys, I have a question for the ladies here that do a lot of blogging. I have contacted the local humane society to see if they would let me be their "volunteer photographer" starting the new year. One of my resolutions is to give back in some way in 2011, and I have a passion for animals. I would like to take pics of the adoptable animals and make a blog that I update a few times a week with the new faces and rescue stories. Hopefully, it will help some of these animals be adopted quicker.

Some of your blogs/websites are amazing and I was wondering if they were free or if you had to pay. Also, who does the graphics and sets up the flash? I want something that looks nice and is easy to navigate, but I can't afford much.

 Thx!  

Milliechel67

What a great idea!  I just use blogger and their standard templates so I'm no help with the fancy stuff but please let us know whenever you get started!

wittyschaffy

we adopted our dog from this organization...

www.ragom.org 

I don't know how they do their pages but I LOVE reading the stories of the puppies on the pages.  They have a section on there for the dogs they've adopted out as well as for puppies that have gone "to the rainbow bridge" as they call it.  All in all, i think they do a fantastic job with it.

 

This is the link to our Lucy's page too... http://ragom.org/avail.cgi/Available/dog?dog_id=3440

jlk0219

Blogger is free and pretty easy to navigate.  They have a ton of widgets you can add to your blog (photo slide show, etc). You can use their template designer to create your own background (I did this on my business website which is hosted on blogger: www.laruelouisedesigns.com. You just upload a square png file, I think the one I used is 150 x 150 px and then tell blogger to tile it. Super easy!) 

Or if you don't want to do that, just google "free blogger backgrounds" and there are a ton of websites out there that have themed backgrounds for you to use.

jlk0219

Oh, and I forgot one thing- Blogger does have a limit as to how many photos you can upload and have them host with their free service.  A way you can get around this is to host your photos somewhere else (like flickr) and then when you want to put them into your blog post you just copy and paste the url for the photo into your post.  It sounds kind of confusing, so once you get to that point you can send me a pm and I'll explain it better

amyngreg

I love your idea!

I don't use my blog for professional purposes, just as a hobby, but I use blogger. It's free, and easy to use. They have a lot of decent templates available that you can choose from, and like jlk (I think) said, there are so many free ones out there if you just Google "free blogger templates" I used one from "cutest blog on the block" for a while, and it was really easy to install and customize. 

All of my "graphics" are just things I've done in Photoshop, nothing fancy. Blogger does allow you to upload video in your post (although it looks like you may know that already from your blog), and you can embed slideshows through Picasa.

If you're looking to get a whole site designed, with Flash, that will probably cost a bit more, though I can't really help you with exactly how much. I really think that with some playing around though, Blogger can have everything you need.

Although.... just thought of this... if you're looking to create a site plus a blog, you may want to check out weebly.com. I used them when I started (and never finished) my married bio, and they were also really easy to use, and had a blog feature that you can connect with your site.