I am not at all sure if this is a required step or not. The way I am thinking though it could very well save you time if you already understood what some of the terms meant.

I realize that some of us are old hat at blogging and don't understand why the heck I am going into such detail. The reason is simple.

Everyday thousands of new people come online and have no idea where to start. I hope that this will make it easier for them.

This list is meant to help the novice - or even intermediate - user.

Let's begin with:

BLOG COMPONENTS AND FUNCTIONS

• Index page - It's logical, it is the front page of the blog
• Header -Contains the name of the blog or a banner relating to what your blog is about (or not).
• Footer - Usually contains navigation and copyright statements
• Sidebar - One or more columns along one or both sides of most blogs main page. Can be used numerous things
• Categories - A collection of topic specific posts
• Post, Entry - Is individual articles that make up a blog
• Comments - Allows readers to leave their remarks
• Captcha - Is a verification code to ensure there are real people leaving remarks or comments. Short for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. Helpful to block automated spam comments.
• Ping - Short for Packet Internet Grouper. Blog and ping helps to notify other blog tracking tools for updates, changes and trackbacks.
• Trackback - A system by which a ping is sent to another blog to notify that their article has been mentioned by you
• Pingback - See trackback.
• Permalink - A link to a specific article
• Tags - labelling / attaching keywords to collect similar posts
• Tag cloud - Displaying tags lists or keywords in a blog. (I don't use this, my preference)
• Blogroll - Ia a list of links to other blogs in your sidebar. Can be a list of related sites or ones you especially like
• Sideblog - A smaller blog usually placed in the sidebar of a blog.
• Template -Is the theme or design you chose when you first started.
• BlogThis - Is a function allows a blogger to blog the entry they a reading
• Plugins - Small files that add improved functionality and new features. Wordpress plugins can greatly improve your blog usage and interactivity
• Dashboard - When you login to your blogging account, it is the first screen with all controls, tools and functions.
• Archives - Is a collection of all your posts on one page. Can be categorized by month etc.
• Expandable post summaries - Gives you the ability to show a small teaser part of the post on the index page that link to the full post.
• Jump - Is the continuation of a the story on another page to preserve space on index page.
• FTP - short for file transfer protocol. Transferring file to and fro from your Web Host using FTP tools like Filezilla
• Blogoshere - Now what the heck kind of word is that? The "blogosphere" is the new buzzword that has replaced "information super highway."
• Archives - This will take any older posts and break them into months and years. Used for reference or record keeping. Allows for others to search through previous topics
• Rss Feed - The file containing a blog's latest posts. It is read by an RSS aggregator/reader and shows at once when a blog has been updated. It may contain only the title of the post, the title plus the first few lines of a post, or the entire post.
• Content - R efers to the words used to compose posts. Posts are the principal element of a blog. The posts are the writings, compositions, discussions, discourses, musings, pictures, graphics, and, yes, the rantings of the blog's owner and guest authors

Some of the words are indeed very starnge and not the normal words one would use on a daily basis.

The language used here is mostly non technical to make the newbie blogger understand the blogging basics .

All I am trying to do is assist you in getting a good head start in the World of Blogging. See you round the “ Blogoshere ”

Look for me again as I continue my quest to “ Step-by- Step ” Tutorial on creating your first blog.

The logical place to start would be to explain the difference between them all.

Budget Hosting

I think that is self-explanatory. If your main concern is the price …. If you're only going to host one or two blogs on a single domain... It may not make sense to go for a higher end web hosting plan!

FrontPage Hosting

Simply means that it allows pages created in FrontPage can be uploaded to the site. Most sites don't or won't allow us to use FrontPage. Something about scripts and FrontPage extensions, but I won't get into that here. I just wanted to make sure everyone was aware that it is available.

E-commerce Hosting

E-commerce (electronic commerce or EC) is the buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet. It covers a range of different types of businesses, from consumer based retail sites, through auction or music sites, to business exchanges trading goods and services between corporations

Dedicated Web Hosting

Dedicated hosting permits individuals and business to lease pre-configured, state-of-the-art equipment and connectivity from a hosting service provider. A dedicated server will be more secure, more private, other things being equal it will be faster, and it is better suited to complex applications.

Shared Hosting

This is the most common type of web hosting account and can be very low cost. With paid shared (virtual) hosting you pay a monthly fee and get a share on a server. For very low cost plans you may only have a small amount of disk space and a low amount of bandwidth (although this will probably not be a problem for the vast majority of websites). With cheap virtual hosting plans you maybe one site amongst hundreds on the same server - in this case reliability may suffer. For slightly more expensive plans you will probably find better reliability.

Collocated Hosting

This is very similar to dedicated hosting, except that you own the server rather than rent it. Your server is placed in the data center and connected to the Internet through the web hosting provider's fast Internet connection. You will then pay a fee for maintenance and bandwidth.

C-Panel

C-Panel is a fully featured web-based control panel that allows you to manage your domain through a web interface. The idea is to transfer as much of the control and responsibility of managing your web site to you. You have the ability to manage all aspects of e-mail, files, backup, FTP, CGI scripts, and web site statistics.

I can guarantee I am probably missing other platforms for Web Hosting but I think I have covered the basics.

The choice is entirely yours, based on what your needs are. As I stated earlier on I chose Free Web Hosting. Personally I use WordPress. It meets my needs for the moment.