By Lou Dolinar
First in a series
Updated Feb. 14, 2006

Maybe you're mad as hell and can't take it anymore. Maybe you just found a box full of Texas Air National Guard memos, or some tantalizing Vietnam after-action reports, in your uncle's attic. You want to tell the world, preferably before the first Tuesday in November.

Once upon a time, you had to convince someone like me that you're not a nutball and get me to write a story about it, because the company I work for owns a printing press. Not anymore. Just reach for a blog, and you're exactly four minutes from reaching 300 million people worldwide. I know, I timed it.

In our continuing how-to coverage of Election 2004 (You Report! You Decide!) for the next few weeks, we're going to show you how to get started as a blogger, build an audience, change the course of history and maybe even make a few bucks. About 3 million people have taken the plunge, and bloggers are playing a big role in coverage of the election.

So how do you get started? Regardless of which software they use, one thing that pretty much all bloggers agree on is that the free software and hosting provided at blogger.com is the way to go for beginners. The service suffered from bandwidth and reliability problems a few years ago, before it was acquired by Google, but has since snapped back.

"Back then when it was down, it affected a huge proportion of the blogging population, and not everyone continued using it, said Duncan Black, aka "Atrios" who runs "Eschaton," one of the most heavily trafficked left-of-center political blogs at http://atrios.blogspot.com. "But overall, now, it's a great service for free ... a huge amount of bandwidth."

"They've redone their system entirely," says Michele Catalano, a Long Islander who has a personal blog at www.asmallvictory.net and a more ambitious group blog at www.command-post.org. "It's great for first-time bloggers. They make it simple, they put up templates so they look professional, and it's hosted for you free, which is good if you're not sure you're going to get any money in."

I first played with Blogger more than a year ago, and it has since grown even easier to use. The clock said 9:30 when I went to the site and logged in as a new user. I set up my name, password and gave my blog a name. Then I picked one of the 12 online templates that creates a space for your blog, room for links, a title and a standing block of information. I even activated the little blogger bug that's available with the Google search bar. If you're reading a page you want to link to, just click on

the bug and up pops the Blogger data-entry screen. It took about 30 seconds to upload my first post, "hi there," a fairly typical delay while the system sorts out your blog from a couple of million others. Elapsed time, start to finish: just less than 4 minutes.

You can get a little more complicated with Blogger. The settings screen lets you add a description of yourself and your page to the template by fiddling with HTML, plus there are other settings such as whether you want the blog indexed on the Blogger site. The template tab gives you access to the raw HTML of your page or lets you switch to another look from among 40 more professionally designed templates.

You also can sign up to include Google-sponsored ads through its Adsense program. Adsense also gives you information about readership, including number of page views, as well as your "click-through" rate. More on that subject, and the whole question of finances, next week.

Not every blogger uses Blogger, and, with a few exceptions like Atrios, the most heavily used sites are also the most customized. Catalano defected a couple of years ago and has tried most of the software and hosting services out there before settling on Movable Type (www.movabletype.org, from Six Apart Limited, with various licensing plans ranging from free to $99.95). Unlike Blogger, which you don't touch and which runs entirely on Web pages hosted at the Blogger site, you need to have a hosting service, the cost of which will vary widely depending on how much traffic your site gets, and you have to install Movable Type modules there as well. When you reach the big time, Catalano says, you might want to move to a service that specializes in bloggers like the one she uses, Hosting Matters (www.hostingmatters.com). Other experienced bloggers simply opt for a site that already supports Movable Type, including Six Apart's own TypePad. (www.typepad.com).

Other potential solutions? Free and low-cost services include Live Journal, www.livejournal.com; Radio Userland, http://radio.userland.com/; Tripod Blog Builder, http://blog.tripod.lycos.com; and Xanga, www.xanga.com.

Next week, we're gonna make you a star.