I've written previously about the joy of blogging in SharePoint, about how to publish a SharePoint blog directly from Word, even the organization of blog categories, and most recently, how to enable anonymous comments in a SharePoint blog, but somehow I've managed to skip the documenting of how to create a blog in SharePoint. Talk about putting the cart before the horse!
The absence of such a post came as both a surprise and a hindrance as I was working on the blog about anonymous comments the other day. I was clicking around trying to figure out which link on the Settings page I needed to click in order to create a blog, and thought that I might be able to quickly find the answer by searching my own blog. When those search results didn't include the desired information, I found myself thinking, "is it somehow possible that I haven't documented how one goes about creating a SharePoint blog??!" As it turned out, not only was it possible but, in the words of the Magic 8-Ball, "it is decidedly so."
And while this fact would seem to indicate that I have never actually created a SharePoint blog, I was at least pleased to have correctly recalled that the process of creating a blog is remarkably similar to how you create a wiki in SharePoint. Since I wanted to create a test blog to test the anonymous comments Web Part on, and since I realized that others may benefit from a post dedicated to the blog creation process, I'm dedicating today's blog to just that.
From the Site Actions button, select Site Settings from the drop down menu. On the resulting Site Settings page, click the Sites and workspaces hyperlink under the Site Administration heading. On the resulting Sites and Workspaces page, you'll see a list of the existing sites and workspaces within the site in question (if any), and you'll also see a Create icon and hyperlink in the toolbar area:
Clicking Create will open the New SharePoint Site page. Since the options on this page are exactly as shown and described in my previous how to create a wiki post (save for the final selection), I'll ask your indulgence in referring to that earlier post for a detailed (and illustrated) explanation of the information required on this form. The only step which differs from that of the wiki creation process is that, under the Collaboration tab in your Template Selection, rather than selecting Wiki Site, you will naturally be choosing Blog instead:
With that selection made, and the remaining information filled out (Title, URL name, Permissions, etc.), upon clicking the Create button at the bottom of the form you'll be greeted with your new blog (yes, it's really that easy):
As you can see from the image above, with the creation of your new blog, you'll find a "Welcome" message and a series of Admin Links including: Create a post, Manage posts, Manage comments, All content, Set blog permissions, and Launch blog program to post. In other words, these links provide all the tools you need to become a SharePoint blogger.
And speaking for myself, I just realized while writing that last paragraph that all of those links (and the forms attached to each of them) represent the content of my next blog entry, so look for that when I return from the upcoming long (holiday) weekend. To my fellow Americans out there, have a happy Independence Day!
More on SharePoint Blogs:
Posted
Jul 01 2009, 04:50 PM
by
John Anderson
John Anderson joined Bamboo Solutions as Manager of Content & Syndication in May 2008 after a 12-year career at AOL. New to SharePoint at the time of his hiring, John was tasked with creating a new blog for the just-launched Bamboo Nation community in which he would document his daily SharePoint learning process. Thus was born the end user-centric SharePoint Blank, for which John authored 200 posts within a year, and which he continues to write today. John writes SharePoint Blank in addition to his responsibilities as Bamboo Nation's de facto managing editor and, while he has learned much about SharePoint in his first year, he gleefully awaits the release of SharePoint 2010, and the reset button that release will represent for SharePoint Blank.