A step-by-step approach towards successfully starting a new blog

Creating and maintaining a blog is NO BIG DEAL, it's NOT difficult and most importantly it's NOT just for 'dorks, nerds and geeks'. On the contrary once you start blogging you'd experience that blogging is a highly effective medium to channelize your creative energies and showcase your talent easily.

I've recently started a new blog called 'Tips & Tricks 4 Bloggers '. All the posts on this blog would be posted with only one objective i.e. to successfully create and/ or maintain a blog here on blogger.com which is also referred to as blogspot.com. I've decided to share this post with all the readers of Surreal Nirvana so that they could know about this blog and also because I believe that many readers would find this post extremely helpful. As the title suggests, in this post I'm going to try to help all readers with an extremely simple to understand and adopt step by step process to create a new blog.

For a person who's never created a blog before it's an evolving process wherein a blogger learns with baby steps and keeps growing with every new post on the blog. But, with this post I plan to expedite your learning process so that you can over come some problems which you might face if you don't know anything about blogging. Please read the steps which have been arranged chronologically and will help you to set up your own blog.

1. Decide the subject area or purpose of the blog: This is extremely important for a successful blog. The subject of your blog could be any of your likes or topics you plan to blog about.  Narrowing down to the main purpose of the blog provides a clear vision for the posts and the content that would be displayed. To illustrate the same effectively I can tell you how this blog was evolved. Surreal Nirvana is all about me recommending movies, music albums, songs, books, websites etc to my readers. All of my readers might not be interested to know how to create and maintain a blog, hence I decided to start this blog which would enable me to focus on both the topics in an unbiased manner.
2. Determine if your blog will be an anonymous one: A  substantial number of blogs are related to personal lives, and regular updates about the blogs' owner. It could be appropriate to classify these blogs as journals. Often these blogs are written since people find an easy outlet to talk about their college life, relationship problems, sexual orientation, family/friend/work issues in a funny, sarcastic manner. For many, this is therapeutic as they share their problems with their readers and their faithful readers interact with them through their comments. BUT, many a times personal blogs can make the blogger vulnerable if the blogger mentions the names, locations, private details etc. There have also been problems of online stalkers and bloggers falling into trouble due to not maintaining required anonymity. Ifyou wish to create a personal blog I'd request you to please take proper precautions. Use variables like the guy/girl named 'X'; my boy/girlfriend number 02; the guy/girl from school/ work who is such a pain instead of declaring names. It might be a good idea to create a pseudonym to secure yourself as well.
3. Think of a great name: All the steps mentioned here are meant to be used purely at users discretion especially this one. Having said that, I'd suggest you do give the name of your blog enough thought since it would become a brand as soon as it's publicized and you've created a strong reader base for your blog. The easiest thing to do is to start a blog with your own name and if need be, there's nothing wrong your name being the namesake for your blog. But if your content is dedicated towards a particular interest area, thinking a good name for your blog could help later. I would suggest to think a couple of names just in case if you can't register your first choice due to non-availability of username.
   
4. Create a separate email address for your blog: I'd strongly recommend you to create a separate email address (probably 'the-name-you've-chosen-for-your-blog@gmail.com') for all your blog purposes. This will enable you to synchronize your blog related mails, subscriptions, reader interactions, your blog based twitter account to a dedicated email address. Also, if you choose to earn revenue out of your bog, a separate email address would help you to easily sort out all your revenue generating subscriptions to a single email address.
   
5. Choose the site where you'll host your blog: I'd leave this decision on you. As I've mentioned earlier, I'd suggest you to choose blogger since it's quite popular and you'd not face any problems with the settings of the account (all your Google account settings will be default since blogger is Google's service), connecting the RSS Feeds (Feedburner is a part of Google) etc. However, you also have a couple of options available besides blogger likeWordPress, Tumblr, Posterous etc.
   
6. Create your blog: Now that all the necessary groundwork is done, you're ready to create your own blog and enter this magical, fulfilling and extremely addictive world of bloggers. Welcome to the bloggers community.

Manish :)

P.S. If you've found this post informative please do help us by telling us what you think of the same. Also feel free to email this post to all your contacts who'd be interested to create a new blog. You can also subscribe to 'Tips & Tricks 4 Bloggers ' through RSS Feeds or get email updates delivered directly to your mailbox.

A step-by-step approach towards successfully starting a new blog

Movie 11: Fast & Furious (2009)

The much awaited fourth installment of the dearly loved movie series has finally released. This series of movies came as a complete package and has won the hearts of the audiences' world wide since. Filled with mind numbing customized cars, heart stopping car chase sequences and races, breath taking ladies, foot stomping music, attitude filled first rate  performances by every cast member on screen and most importantly it’s the kick-a$$ attitude of 'The Fast & Furious' which differentiates the franchise from any other.

This movie is an interquel set between the second and the third movie of the series. Audience who liked 'The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)' would be pleased to see Sung Kang on screen with Vin Diesel and would relate to the connection between the two characters which was hinted in movie. Fast & Furious is directed by Justin Lin (of Annapolis, Better Luck Tomorrow and Spotlighting fame). The plot of the movie follows the storyline of the prime characters Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel of The Pacifier, Babylon A.D. and Boiler Room fame), Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker of Flags of Our Fathers, Into the Blue and Timeline fame), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez of S.W.A.T., Resident Evil and Lost fame) and Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster of Annapolis, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and D.E.B.S. fame). The movie starts with a high pressure oil tank heist on the remote deserted freeway. The sequence holds you tight on your seat and gears you up for an exciting trip ahead. The storyline of the movie is quite watertight and disclosing details about the same would be through injustice, however I must mention the races and the chase sequences in this movie are truly spectacular and unlike any other sequence seen before in movies of this franchise or otherwise. As a viewer I would suggest you to brace yourself for a completely new and refreshed top gear experience.

Fast & Furious can be distinguished from other movies with regards to the treatment with which this movie is made. All other movies of this genre generally move on high octane fuel and run on break neck speed from start to the end, but this movie dares to challenge the same and manages to raise the bar. Fast & Furious can be compared to a roller coaster which movies exhilarates you at the start and then suddenly pushes the envelope with a sudden plummet or plunges even further than the last time. That's exactly what happens with this movie. If you think the pace of the movie is slowing down, wait till you get the next high voltage jolt which leaves you spell bounded, and this happens a couple of times with this movie till the time movie finally reaches the destination and hits the brakes (the end). So as I mentioned earlier, brace yourself, secure the seat belts and enjoy the ride.

Surreal Nirvana readers can choose to buy the DVD of the movie through Amazon via Surreal Nirvana Store. To know more about the Surreal Nirvana Store, Click Here.

Click Here to buy the Soundtrack of Fast And Furious

Click Here to buy The Fast and the Furious Trilogy (The Fast and the Furious / 2 Fast 2 Furious / The Fast and the Furious: Toyko Drift) [Blu-Ray]

Click Here to buy the DVD of The Fast and the Furious (Widescreen Tricked Out Edition)

Click Here to buy the DVD of 2 Fast 2 Furious (Widescreen Edition)

Click Here to buy the DVD of The Fast and the Furious - Tokyo Drift (Widescreen Edition)

Click Here to check Fast & Furious on Wikipedia and Click Here to check Fast & Furious on IMDB.

Manish :)

P.S. All readers are invited to join the new community which plans to unite all music and movie lovers under one URL. Click Here to know all about it. Make sure you leave a word about this post and hope to see you again on Surreal Nirvana soon.

Movie 11: Fast & Furious (2009)

Website 17: http://www.ziddu.com/

Attachments are the most time consuming part of composing and/or sending an email. In spite of faster internet connections, attaching is till date an extremely cumbersome, time consuming affair. With time, larger mailbox capacities, the size and number of attachments or file(s) shared over internet has increased tremendously. Moreover problems like songs getting clipped, not being able to attach and send installable files (files which end with .exe extension) still remains a big problem with most of the email providers. Sending files to contacts on social networking sites would mean to draft a new email with a fresh attachment which more time wasted to load an attachment. Also imagine the time wasted wherein you're supposed to send the same attachment to different set(s) of people in multiple mails. Attachments or files which being shared through any medium namely emails, blogs, social networking sites, messengers, chats always mean more time wasted online every time they're shares.

A single website being recommended in this post could provide a solution to all your file sharing problems. Ziddu is a safe, secure and an extremely useful, easy to use time saving option available to share anything and everything with your contacts, blog readers. All what you need to do is upload a file, set of files, photo album etc on this website ONLY ONCE and you'll be provided with a unique link which will act like a key. Only people with whom you decide to share the unique link would be able to download the file(s) using the site. And since you'll be given a link, you can feel free to share it any way you like viz email, your blog, social networking sites etc. Yet another feature of this website which might prove to be extremely useful just in case if you share data online extremely frequently is that every time somebody downloads file(s) being shared by you on Ziddu, your account will be credited with money which you can transfer to your PayPal account later. Readers can experience how easy it is to share and download a file being shared on Ziddu, by clicking here and downloading a legitimate copy of a play titled 'Overruled' written by the exemplary 'George Bernard Shaw'. The source of this file is the website of 'Project Gutenberg'.

Click Here to create your own Ziddu account and start sharing all your word, pdf, powerpoint, excel, mp3, exe files with every body without having to waste time attaching the same in your email ever again.

Manish :)

Website 17: http://www.ziddu.com/

Book 04: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

After having recommended the best selling debut ‘The Kite Runner’, the natural progression leads to recommending yet another gem by the gifted author ‘Khaled Hosseini’. The next novel by Khaled is called ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’. Like ‘The Kite Runner’ (a substantial portion of it at least), this novel is set in Afghanistan.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is primarily a story of lives of two girls who become women through the years which are divided in four parts of the book. The first girl being Mariam, a girl who lived with her mother until she was a teen and due to some reasons not worth disclosing was married off when she was just a teenager. This forms the first part of the book. The atrocities and moments of sorrow which Mariam experiences in her life are explained with an unparallel style which make you feel emotionally attached to her and you start to empathize with a character which been crafted in your subconscious mind through the pages of the book. In the second part we’re introduced to the second girl or the second most important character of the book named Laila. This part of the book reflects on life of Laila and her bonding with her parents, her friends. Everyday moments lived by a daughter with her father that  get etched in her memory forever and blossoming first love in this Laila’s life is the center piece of the character and this part of the book. The third part of the book is the real essence of the story when lives of Mariam and Laila are juxtaposed and the way a beautiful and the strongest relationship is created in the book. Divulging any further details about the book or the story would be a clear injustice. Part four provides just the perfect conclusion to the book.

Development of relationships and the way the characters and their lives progress with time between is one of the most prominent strength of Khaled which is evident in both his creations. A Thousand Splendid Suns wouldn’t be half as good if the sensitivity between characters and the grief, sentiments shared between then was handled in any other way. A Thousand Splendid Suns proves the unadulterated talent and genius of Khaled Hosseini. Make sure you read this one at the soonest possible opportunity and I can assure you won’t regret the decision.

Surreal Nirvana readers can choose to buy a copy of the book through Amazon via Surreal Nirvana Store. To know more about the Surreal Nirvana Store, Click Here.

Click Here to buy your copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns

Click Here to buy your copy of The Kite Runner (Paperback)

Click Here to buy your copy of The Kite Runner (Illustrated Version)

Click Here to buy your DVD of The Kite Runner

Click Here to buy your copy of The Kite Runner in Blu-ray

Manish :)

P.S.:  Did you know you can print every post, send it to your contacts via email or just share it on your facebook profile. To print the post, please check the individual post page for the 'Print this post' option.

Book 04: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini