Did you always aspire to have a Bangla blog of your own but never knew how to start? Well this post could be bring an end to your quest, as we guide you step-by-step to have your own Bangla blog, using universally acceptable Bangla fonts so that your posts can be read by anyone and everyone. While this discussion is mainly related to creating a Bangla blog at Blogger.com we believe that you can actually create one using any of the Blog hosting services provided they support UTF-8 character encoding and allow changing the blog template to insert the requisite meta information.
Step 1: If you got it, flaunt it
The basic mantra behind getting a Bangla blog (infact any web-page in Bangla) would be to tuck the following meta tags between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags of your blog template:<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="bn">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
Settings > Formatting tab and make sure that the following tag is there on your blog template.As of now, Blogger.com does not support Bangla (or Bengali) though it supports Hindi (for example, see my Hindi blog Nukta Chini). So you won't be able to see "Bengali" in the list of languages on Settings >Formatting. But we hope Blogger.com will soon accommodate other languages, including Bangla. What does it mean? It means that The Date/Time stamp or the Archive Calandar would not be viewable in Bangla, but in default English. In any case, what matter are the blog posts which you can easily write in Bangla. You would do well to also go through this topic.Step 2: Did you see what I saw?<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=<$BlogEncoding$>" />
Were you able to see the Bangla proverb written last post below? If you answered no, and you probably are only seeing junk characters, change your browser's encoding (set the View-> Encoding to UTF-8). If you are still not able to see Bangla, and you now see boxes, then you do not have a Unicode compliant font on your computer. Read on to know how you would be able to see the Bangla text.
To view Bangla text your computer should have atleast one of these Open type, Unicode compliant font:
You may also use the code2000 font from James Kass. For Windows (Win98, Win NT & Windows 2000), lay hands on usp10.dll (uniscribe processor) and copy it to the c:\windows\system\ directory for win9x and c:\windows\system32\ directory for NT and 2000. Note: This dll comes as part of windows for 2000 and XP (and can be found in c:\windows\system32). Also, you should have Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher on your machine.
Tools -> Internet Options -> Fonts in Internet Explorer. Choose "Bengali" from the list (as a matter of fact you should see all the font names, mentioned above, depending on which of these you installed). Click on any one of the fonts that appear in the list, depending on the preview and your liking. I personally liked "Likhan".Step 3: From thoughts to words?
Now, the most important aspect of your Bangla Blog would be posting your thoughts, in other words, how to type in Bangla, right? While it would always be advisable to use any good Bangla Unicode editor such as Lekho (and you may find others here) I would suggest using the excellent free online tools made available by Deepayan. One of these tools lets you type Bangla in Roman script but my personal favorite is this one. The tools come with a help document so you don't have to panic at all.This is, I believe, everything you would need to know to start your Bangla blog. And once you start your own, don't forget to get it listed at the Bangla blog directory. Happy bong-blogging!
Did we miss any crucial point? Is any information given above erroneous? We request your help to correct us so that others may benefit from this document. Use the comments area to convey your thoughts.