Saturday, August 10, 2013

My first Blogger post

Hello, World! This is my first post on this, my new blog.

Not that I'm new to blogging. My professional, work-related blog -- "Gary Matthews at Work" -- is at GaryMatthews.com. And my "friends and family" personal blog -- "Gary Matthews at Home" -- is at GaryMatthews.org.

Those are WordPress websites. I love WordPress. That love won't change! But I've decided to start this new blog on Google's Blogger service. Why?

Mainly as an experiment. One of my passions is helping friends and clients claim ownership of their own space on the Internet -- grab their own tract of land, so to speak.

And one of the neat ways Blogger facilitates this is by allowing any user to use a custom domain name. That's important. It's really, really important. Web insiders understand how important that is, and they're largely keeping that information to themselves.

So I'm into helping people get their own, personal, custom domain names while they still can -- and then using those names. Here's an article where I explain why:

http://garymatthews.com/2013/06/owning-your-own-web-name-why-you-must-grab-it-now/

And here's where I explain how to use your custom domain name -- free -- for email, even if you don't have your own website under that name:

http://garymatthews.com/2013/07/owning-your-own-email-name-for-free/

But since a Blogger account is free, and since Google lets you use your custom domain name for that free account, that means you also can have a free website.

Right now, I'm doing this mainly to learn the ropes of Blogger. This blog is starting out with the name "GaryLMatthews.blogspot.com". Not gonna stay there. I hate that "blogspot" in my web address, so I'll be replacing it with my chosen custom domain. Soon.

But I'll learn. Want to push the limits, see what Blogger can do, and what it can't.

My main reason, as I said, is to help others who want to go the same route. Stay tuned!

And since some of you are way more experienced than I am at this Blogger game, please chime in and help me out! I need your suggestions and observations, so please freely use the comment form at the end of this post. Let's talk!