How Do I Set Up A Blog – Download Wordpress
n the previous series How Do I Start A Blog we discussed a number of the basic steps that you will need to take when starting your blog. We discussed making a decision as to what type of blog might interest you; the 5 basic Internet business structures; what products you might sell or promote; steps in selecting a domain name, ftp client and host for your blog and much more. While some of those steps would have been avoided if you did not register a domain name and place it with a host. For me I want the control and options that I have by owning my domain name and using a host. You will need to decide what is best for you.
As earlier discussed in our series How Do I Start A blog, there are a variety of publishing platforms that can be used. I use Wordpress exclusively and will not be talking about any other blog platform. I have found Wordpress to be reliable, very easy to use even for a non-technical person like me. It is very customizable, powerful and my favorite word “free.” It also seems like there is just about a limitless number of free themes and plugins for Wordpress. There are also a number of reasonably priced premium themes such as the AdSense Niche Themes and the Revolution Series Themes that I have used on some of my blogs.
Also as previously discussed in How Do I Start A Blog, Wordpress offers a couple of options. You can register your own domain name and set it up on a host such as HostGator. HostGator and a number of other hosting companies enable you to add WordPress to your domain through a couple of easy clicks. If your hosting service is like the one I previously used they did not offer that service and you will need to go WordPress.org and download it to your hard drive. Another option is WordPress.com. This is an absolutely no cost blog using a blog name that will have a Wordpress extension. I Personally register a domain name at a small annual fee and pay a small monthly fee to host my blog. For me the control of ownership that a self hosted blog gives me is preferable.
Now that we have all of that out of the way lets get WordPress set up.
Sign in to your host: For TeenageObesity.us I enter http://teenageobesity.us/cpanel. This brings up the cPanel Login. Enter your Username and Password and click on Login.
At the cPanel of Host Gator you see a blue box titled “Do you need help getting started.” You may have something similar at the hosting service you have decided to use. If you are new to a cPanel or need a refresher you will want to view this and the other tutorials offered. You may do it now or come back to them later. For now I am going to continue to get started with WordPress. If you are using Host Gator and following along, look for the box titled Software / Services. In that box click on the blue smiley face-like image titled “Fantastico De Luxe.”
On the left hand side under Blogs you will wee WordPress listed. Click on WordPress and it will bring up a panel where you will give the Password and Login you wish to use for WordPress.
The total time from signing in to signing out should have taken about 5 minutes. If you are like me and anything related to technology confuses you it may take a bit longer the first time. One thing I like about HostGator is that they have lots of free tutorials and if you still run into problems you can call them and get a live person that will walk you through it.
Now when we sign into our domain we see a panel where we can login using the username and password that we assigned to ourself while using Fantastico at the Cpanel to upload WordPress. After entering our username and password and clicking on Log In we are taken to the WordPress Dashboard. At the Dashboard we click on Themes and we will see a couple of default themes that we can select from. At the bottom of that page is a link WordPress theme directory. Clicking on that link you will have over 450 free themes that you can select from. There are also other free themes that you can find by doing a search at your favorite search engine along with premium themes.
In our next session of How Do I Setup A Blog we will discuss selecting and adding a theme to our blog and adding plugins that will assist us in marketing our site. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Techless Terry
