Creating a blog may seem like a daunting task for many. In reality, not much coding knowledge is necessary – it could help – but not mandatory. Indeed, the interwebs are filed with a multitude of information on how to create a blog – if you don’t believe me, click here. And as a blogging newbie, I wasn’t quite sure where to start. What blogging platform was I to choose? And what about hosting? So many questions…This blog post is my journal entry for that very journey. Now with that out of the way, let’s begin.
Think About What You’re Going To Blab About
I think the general idea here is do what comes natural. Pick a topic you’re interested in. Let your passion be your guide, yeah I know, pretty corny, but you get the point. In my case, it’s whatever that interests me – so a blog about nothing it is. Simple enough, so far so good..
What Blogging Platform To Use, Free Or Paid?
I must confess, really didn’t do much research on the topic of platforms. From what I gathered, WordPress has a strong following. So I followed.
In short, you don’t wanna get bogged down with the technicality of it all – you want something popular, with minimal fuss, that simply works. WordPress covers the basics:
- Let’s you post pictures/videos to your blog posts
- Supports comments
- Strong community (i.e.: many themes/plugins and knowledgeably support community)
- Frequent upgrades
- Free
The free stuff, as tantalizing as it sounds, may not suit in the long run. You’d get a subdomain sure, something like subdomain.domain.com, but it’s sure not to roll off your lips. You be limited to certain themes/plugins/layouts. And as your blogging skills grow, your blog will not grow with you. Also, you’d have less control over your blog and because it’s hosted on someone else’s site, you have to play by someone else’s rules. I suggest hitting the deals sites to find cheap hosting services. Canada has RedFlagDeals and Slickdeals is the American counterpart.
Costs range from $4 – $10/month for hosting and $10 – $20/year for domain registration and renewals.
Choose A Domain. Pay And Install WordPress
Think about the domain name you wish to use. Just keep it short.
Once you’ve paid for your domain/hosting, you’ll be able to log into your account. You have two options to install WordPress:
- Automated Installation
- Manual Installation
By far the simplest way to accomplish this is via a one-click install (have not attempted the manual install as of yet). I’d say that most hosting services provide what’s called a Control Panel (cPanel) with a multitude of utilities to facilitate the process of managing your account. My hosting company had the WordPress one-click installer under a menu item entitled Softaculous Apps Installer – yours might be different.
WordPress Install Screen
Be mindful of the following:
- Software Setup > In Directory: This needs to be empty to install in http://yourdomain.com
- Site Settings > Site Name: Assign a site name (this could be changed later)
- Site Settings > Site Description: Assign a description(again, this could be changed later)
- Admin Account > Admin Username: Input a username
- Admin Account > Admin Password: Input a strong password
Accept the defaults, select a theme and install. I’ll show you in another post how to upload a theme and activate it.
Once the install completes you should be ready to go. WordPress has a nifty way to administer your blog. All site administration is done via the url http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin. Login with the Admin Account credentials you supplied above.
See you next time!