Setting up your own blog has become extremely easy over the past few years. Today anyone can have their own blog set up within minutes, and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. I will guide you through the setup process I have used many times for myself and for clients, and you too can have a blog up and running in no time!
The first thing you will need is web hosting. This is just about the only thing you will have to pay for and really shouldn’t cost you any more than about $7 a month. I use Hostmonster.com, it comes with a free domain name, it’s super cheap, and you can use just one account to set up as many blogs as you wish!
After a couple minutes you will have received your web hosting account login information in your email. Go ahead and log in to the Hostmonster web hosting control panel using the information provided. You will find yourself at a “dashboard” with many different icons, scroll down and click the one called “Fantastico De Luxe”:
Fantastico can be used to install many useful web applications for free, one of which is Wordpress – arguably the best and most popular blogging platforms available today. Select Wordpress from the left menu to proceed to the next step:
Click “New Installation” to begin configuring your new blog:
On the next screen (see below) you will be able to configure some basic things about the blog you are about to set up. Select the domain you are installing it on (if you have more than one domain name). You can usually leave the “Install in directory” blank unless you know what you are doing and want a static non-blog homepage. For “Administrator Username” use your favorite alias, and whatever password you wish in the password field. Important: Remember this information as you will need it to log in to you blog to make pages and posts etc.
I always use the same alias in the “Admin Nickname” field and leave the email as-is. The site name should be the title of your blog, eg. “Ron Watson’s Fantastic Weblog”. And your description should be a short slogan or summaryof you blog like “The life and times of an aircraft mechanic”.
Go ahead and click “Install Wordpress” and cross your fingers! If everything went well you should get a success message after about 10-15 seconds.
Guess what? Your blog is now setup! Navigate to your domain name in your web browser and you should see a pretty empty blog with a post titled “hello world”.
Of course, to to make changes and additions to you blog and it’s template,you will need to log in. To do so, navigate to you control panel which will be located at yourdomain.com/wp-admin. Simply fill in the login information you used to set up your blog and away you go!
There you have it! Your own blog! Have some fun poking around the Wordpress “dashboard” interface and you will find that it is quite easy to make the changes and additions you need. All you have to do now is make posts and tell all your friends about your new blog! Good Luck!
