JonesPC

So you want to start a blog and dont know where to start? Part 2

Yesterday I talked a little about where you can go to set up a free hosted blog, today Im going to talk about another option that you have if you want to set up a blog.

Wordpress

I know what you are thinking, I talked about wordpress yesterday. That was the free hosted version of wordpress at wordpress.com. If you head over to wordpress.org, you can download the wordpress blogging framework and host it wherever you want. Dont get me wrong, this wordpress download is also free, and it is free to use wordpress but setting up your blog this way will cause you to spend a little money. If you want to host your own wordpress blog, these are the things you need to do…

Get a domain name

Domain names aren’t that expensive, you just go to a domain registrar like Godaddy.com and start searching for available domain names. If you’ve never looked for a domain name before, youd notice that it is hard to find one, your first choice is probably going to be taken. The good thing is you can keep trying names until you find one available that you like and you don’t have to pay anything until you found one. The cost on the domain names from Godaddy.com are usually around $8.99 a year, but the prices vary depending on what type of domain you choose to buy. If you find one you like, its a good idea to go ahead and get it, even if you aren’t ready to do anything else just yet. Tomorrow it might be taken.

Find a host

If you are just starting out, I would recommend that you get some type of shared hosting. Shared hosting is when a company divides a server up to host multiple websites. They are usually inexpensive, from $5-$20 bucks a month. Godaddy.com also offer shared hosting. What I use to host this blog is 1and1.com. For more information about finding a shared host, check out this post I wrote a while ago. One thing you have to make sure is supported when you are looking for a host is that it is compatible with wordpress, which means PHP. Most of them are so its not anything that you will have a hard time doing.

Find a template

The next thing you will want to do is find a template. A template is the overall look and design of your blog. you can purchase templates from various places, even have a custom made template that will be unique to only your blog but those options can get pretty expensive. What I would suggest is to check out the templates that are available at Wordpress.net. There are a lot of them so make sure you have a little bit of time to go through with it. One thing to remember is the template you choose is free and available to everyone so chances are others will have the same template you do. I usually try to get templates Ive never seen on a popular blog, or ones that I like that looks like it hasn’t been downloaded a ton of times.

Download Wordpress

Like I said, you have to go to wordpress.org and download the wordpress framework. its a really small file so it shouldn’t be too hard to do.

The last thing I would suggest doing is getting a FTP program. you will be doing a lot of uploading through FTP. I use CuteFTP, but there are plenty out there to choose from.

After you have all those things, you are ready to set up your blog. check back tomorrow when I give a brief tutorial on doing so.