Common Sense

If in doubt, use your common sense with regards to what you unleash on the Internet. If you are the type who are generally not concerned about your identity being out there, by all means. But if you are like the majority, you can find a balance between full-on disclosure and keeping yourself under lock and key. Consider being careful when posting personal identifying details and photos.

Personal details
It is wise to protect the identity of not only yourself, but your entire family. Give them nick names too. If they are involved in your blog, you can even let them choose their own.
Do not discuss where you live in great detail. Many websites and some blog platforms allow you to use maps to place your exact location at times of posting or where you were when a certain photo was taken. While these features are cool, think for a moment if you really want the entire world to know that. And do you want to make that information accessible.
It is generally best to protect yourself as much as possible.

Sharing photos
It is important to protect your name, but your face needs protecting too. Many people choose to share their faces but not their names, you may still be recognized. Posting photos of children is more commonplace online these days, but use caution when choosing where to post them and which photos to post. There are a lot of dodgy creeps out there, so it is best to keep your photos in the family, or at least protected.

Protection

You can strengthen the protection of your online presence by requiring your blog readers to sign in with passwords, adjusting your blog's privacy settings, using a screen name or pseudonym, establishing an email account for your blog only, and registering your domain privately.

Password protection
If you are hosting your own blog with a hosting provider, you may choose to require users to read your blog by logging in with a global login and password. Some content management systems and blog platforms offer members features that let them grant access with their own login and password. If you use a hosted blogging service, adjust your privacy settings for the appropriate level should work just fine.

Privacy settings
If you are using a hosted blogging service, you can choose to remove your site from the search engine indexes by setting the preferences on your account. You may want to check your particular blog service's documentation for more information.

Screen names
Unless you are a public presence, it is probably better to avoid using your last name on your blog. If it is necessary, skipping it can help protect your identity, especially if you have a very unusual name. If you would prefer to avoid using your real name, consider choosing an alter-ego.

Anonymous email
Having a blog can generate not only a lot of comments, but also a lot of spam in your inbox, so you may want to have an email address which you do not mind getting picked up by the spam bots when they crawl your site. You also want to avoid using email addresses that include your real name or place of business. Sign up for a Gmail account or other free email service and choose an email address that you will use. Some bloggers choose to use an email address that is the same or similar to their blog name.

Private domain registration
When registering your domain name, consider adding private registration to your site. Private registration masks your personal information, such as name, contact number, and registrant mailing address from those who search for your domain in the WHOIS domain lookup.

Google Basics

Google sends out what are called spiders, bots, or crawlers to follow links from page to page throughout the Internet. When it finds a new web page it has not indexed, it crawls the code on the page and sends the information gathered back to Google. Bots visit indexed websites again and again so the listing stays fresh, but how often they do may vary.

When Google bots crawl your blog's content and links, they pick up the content and send it back to Google to index in the search engine. Google indexes just about anything you published, you may still get hits for years by people searching Google for your content.

It is possible to block Google from indexing your website. Assorted scripts are available with the help of a web developer or a tech-savvy friend, you can implement into your own blog to block the spiders from crawling your code and content. Try the search engine. Some blog services, like Blogger, WordPress.com, and Vox offer to block them for you if you choose to do so in your settings.

There are reasons why people would want Google to index their sites and reasons why they would not want. Chew on some of these and decide if blocking Google and other search engines from crawling your site is your choice.

Business or pleasure
Do you have a personal or community blog for recreational fun or a blog to represent your business? A lot of bloggers have both, so it is important to consider what you are willing to share on your personal blog and if you mind your professional connections stumbling across it.
If you do wish to run a blog for your personal use and have a professional business presence online or off, you may want to make your personal blog private or take the steps to block Google from indexing your blog, even though it does not guarantee privacy. It is simply a small step. You may also choose to use a pseudonym for your personal thoughts.

Shameless self-promotion
If the purpose of your blog is to gain exposure, allowing Google to crawl your site and index your URLs is a great step. Make sure you also include plenty of appropriate keywords to help target user searches even further and allow you to climb in the Google ranks. You may still choose to use discretion when discussing your personal life, but given the nature of your career, it makes perfect sense to use your name or stage name.

Public Blogs

It is obvious that most blogs are public. It is a public blog if when is out there and anyone and everyone who stumbles across it can read it. Public blogs consist of a variety of topics, from personal to genre-specific, but the sole fact that anyone can look at them is what makes them public blogs.

Public blog does not mean that it belongs to the public at large, nor do the masses have any entitlement over one's blog, it simply because it is publicly viewable. Some bloggers feel pressure from their readers to provide. You do not have to provide anything other than what you have promised. If you have a business blog or a blog that advertises some specific service to its readers, then it is important to provide what you have touted. However, if you have a personal blog that you manage and update at your leisure, your only responsibility is to yourself, not the public.

A public blog may or may not have comments open. A public blog does not belong to the public; it is simply visible to the public. The choice of whether to allow readers to engage with your blog by opening comments or trackbacks is entirely up to you.

Semiprivate Blogs

Catharsis is great but sometimes you need someone to listen and perhaps offer some advice. Keeping your blog secret does not allow for that. It makes perfect sense to keep your blog private if you are blogging about something personal. But if you want to share with family and close friends, semiprivate blog would be more appropriate.

A semiprivate blog is one that allows you to set varying permissions based on membership groups. You can accomplish this with a blog platform such as ExpressionEngine or Movable Type, but the quick and easy way is an out-of-the-box solution. A handful of hosted blogging services allow this, such as Blogger or Vox.

Vox is extremely easy for you to have a public blog, private blog, and semiprivate blog all rolled into one. As a Vox member, you can set up various member groups in your Vox Neighborhood. From there, you have several options for who can view and comment on each individual entry or the blog as a whole.

You can see how this would provide the opportunity for you to share only what you want to share and give you some control over whom you share it. While you still have the freedom to set the permissions by individual entry.

Private Blogs

Some people want to blog for themselves as a catharsis, and a blog platform enables them to do so easily, while archiving their writing and providing a simple printable display. While you could do something similar with a word processing program, some people are techie types and prefer to use a blog platform to their advantage.

Blog platforms also allow you to categorize your entries, order them easily by date, and clearly chronicle whatever it is you are keeping track of, be it your daily life, food intake, or workout regimen. A blog is usually accessible anywhere that has an Internet connection.

Some hosted blogging services, such as Blogger, offer easy ways to make your blog private by just clicking a few settings. Your blog will be viewable to the public or open by default.