This idea has been brewing away for a while now, you love books and would like to share your passion with other book lovers too. That's when creating your space, your own blog comes in. It's a simple yet creative decision to make since blog design can look tricky but really doesn't take a lot of your time. I created my blog on WordPress which is free to design on, does have some premium elements that cost but all the free stuff works wonders.
There are plenty of other book blogs on WordPress so a good thing to do before you start creating your own blog is to see what other blogs look like and get a good feel for layout and colours. Once you're satisfied, time to sign up. WordPress enables you to create your own blogging username so for example, mine is www.marriedtobooksreviewsandblog.wordpress.com
The wordpress.com part of the domain is available in the free options, premium is for using .org or .com which does cost a set amount of money every year.
You only need a valid email address and a secure password to log onto your blog. When that is done, you can start designing!
There are lots of templates and layouts available to you so it is important that you chose one that you feel represents your blog best. Since potential readers of your blog might read your posts on a mobile device, you don't want your layout to run off the page. You can add menus to your blog so for mine at the top, I have a Home menu, About menu which talks about myself in general, Review Policy in case an author wants to send me a book for review, Social Media Contacts such as Twitter and Goodreads and What Posts Do I Make On This Blog for those who are new to my blog and are interested in seeing what I write about. (I would share a screenshot here but sadly, it doesn't work for Wattpad but click the link above).
Adding social media widgets to your blog was tricky but it shows to potential readers what you do away from your blog. I will leave links at the bottom that I found extremely helpful in creating a blog!
Make sure that first impressions look professional, an untidy design will turn readers away so don't include any inappropriate images or misspell your blog name. Always be open to thoughts from others about your design. My main goal for mine is to make sure my blog is accessible to everyone and that my fonts and images don't overpower my writing.
Here are some really useful links that helped with my blogging design:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/goodreads-widget/
https://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/twitter-timeline-widget/
https://colorlib.com/wp/best-personal-blog-wordpress-themes/
https://en.support.wordpress.com/my-blogs/