I'll admit it, I've started more blogs than I should have. There are 3 or 4 still sitting around on servers just taking up space. What I have trouble with is finding a topic that's interesting now but will still be interesting 6 months from now. This site (FBW) is one of the few that I've been able to stick with for a while because, while it's pretty focused, there is still a lot to talk about regarding dynamic content management systems.
So, any tricks to picking a topic? It's always the first step, but also the one that's the hardest for me.
Anyway, here's the list of things I do when I startup a new blog project.
1 - Pick a topic. I spend more time on this than any other task.
2 - Find a domain. Sometimes I get lucky with a good one, sometimes not so much. But I like to get the domain name before starting the design so I can use the domain name as part of the design. It's too much trouble to go back and redo parts of the design when I find out the domain I want is already taken.
3 - Pick the blog software. So far it's always been WordPress. Haven't found a reason not to use WP.
4 - Install. I've gotten pretty quick at this.
5 - Customize. I used to like to design my own themes from scratch but with as many really good free themes as there are out there I've started finding one that's close and customizing it.
6 - And start posting. The first dozen or so are the easiest. I'm still excited about the new project. It's the next few hundred that are hard :)
I'm sure something's missing. Let me know what.