How to Start a Blog

The Welcome Page (Dashboard)

After you log in to the Administration area (http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin) You will be taken to this page:

Here, you will be able to perform various actions like Writing a New Post, edit an existing post or keep working on an unpublished draft. Other features include adding links to other websites and blogs (often called the blogroll) and add new static pages that you want your visitors to see every time they visit your blog. Every time you visit the dashboard, you will see a quick summary of your blog’s activity (like new comments and comments awaiting approval). From the dashboard you will be able to access all the main features of the Wordpress platform (theme management, plugins, general settings, time-zone settings, blog title and description, etc.

After you explore the dashboard, we recommend you to write a test post to get familiar with the interface (don’t worry you can delete the test post in the “Manage posts page” of the dashboard).
The interface is similar to a word processor, and it usually appears as the wysiwyg mode (what you see is what you get). The wysiwyg editor will basically let you insert any kind of multimedia element you want (video, pictures, flash animations, etc.) and you will also be able to insert code (html mode) if you are a slightly more advanced user. In this page you will be able to manage all the standard settings for this specific post. You can disable comments in this specific post, you can save as an unpublished draft if you want to keep it unpublished until its finished, plus you can schedule the post to publish by itself in a specific date and time. You need to explore and get familiar with all the options the editor offers before you start writing official posts.

We recommend to anyone who wants to start a blog, to consider using the Wordpress platform. It is the industry standard and the most complete solution, which is backed by millions of users and programmers worldwide.

To start a blog using the wordpress platform hosted on your own domain name (not wordpress.com) follow these 4 steps:

Step #1: Register your own domain name. We recommend you register your own dot com with a name or phrase related to the niche you want to create your blog for. Example: you want to create a blog about fine diamonds, well you need to find a domain name with the keywords “diamonds” and “fine” example: FineDiamonds4Ever.com . This is very important because search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Msn, etc. take into consideration the domain name in order to include it in their database to judge id the domain is related or not. We strongly recommend you register your domain name with Godaddy .

Step #2: Get a hosting account. This is essential to having your own blog because it is where your blog’s files and content will be stored so that when someone enters yourname.com they can actually see your blog. We recommend you get a hosting account with the “Fantastico” feature, because it enables you to install the complete Wordpress platform with a single click and no hassles. Get a hosting account with at least 50mb of space and 500mb of bandwidth per month if you are starting a small blog. For starters we recommend a green hosting service which runs their servers on wind power (meaning almost 100% uptime) plus you are helping the environment. The company is called 123Cow (funky name I know…) but They are the best green hosting providers and it’s really really cheap ($3.99 per month) and they iclude the “fantastico” feature.

Step #3: Now that you have a hosting account,you need to install the Wordpress blogging platform. If your hosting provider has the fantastico feature, just enter to your cpanel (control panel) and browse the blog section to install the latest Wordpress platform. If your hosting provider does not have fantastico, then you need to download the latest Wordpress platform from Wordpress.org , save it to your computer, unzip it (extract the compressed file), upload to your hosting account via FTP (file transfer protocol) and follow the instructions on the wordpress website to install and configure the blogging platform manually.

Step #4: Now you can start blogging. To log in to your Wordpress platform, simply type in your browser’s address bar: http://yourname.com/wp-admin (replace yourname with your actual domain name).