How to Start a Blog

A Step by Step Guide to Cre­at­ing Your First Blog

Ques­tions com­monly asked by read­ers, friends and fam­ily are “How do I blog? How do I start blog­ging for the first time?” While many peo­ple on the Inter­net have found out how to start their first blog, a shock­ingly high amount of peo­ple are still unsure how to go about set­ting up their first blog. So, for this rea­son we have cre­ated this resource on how to start blog­ging for the first time.

Below, we have bro­ken down this guide into five easy steps. It really is as easy as five steps, and we can assure you that by just skim­ming through the top­ics listed below — you will get a much bet­ter under­stand­ing of how to start a blog.

• Step 1: Choos­ing a Topic

What do you want to blog about? This sec­tion will help you make the smartest and safest choice when it comes to choos­ing your blog topic.

• Step 2: Self-Hosting or Service?

Do you want to start a seri­ous blog, or one just for fun? This sec­tion will go over the best options for choos­ing the type of host­ing you want to go with for your blog — paid or free.

• Step 3: Get­ting a Domain Name

Reg­is­ter­ing your own domain name for your blog is very impor­tant for brand­ing pur­poses. This sec­tion will give you advice on choos­ing the best domain name, as well as the best places to get them.

• Step 4: Get­ting a Web Host

If you do choose to host your blog your­self, then you should fol­low some of the advice given in this sec­tion of the guide.

• Step 5: Installing Word­Press

Word­Press is the ideal blog­ging plat­form, and any seri­ous blog­ger should take using Word­Press into high consideration.

Step 1: What Do You Want To Blog About?

There are a lot of blogs already on the inter­net, but that doesn’t mean you wont be suc­cess­ful at get­ting thou­sands of read­ers and mak­ing a big dif­fer­ence in people’s lives.  The key is to choose some­thing you are pas­sion­ate about.  If you are pas­sion­ate about the topic you want to blog about then you will be more likely to stick to it and find suc­cess in shar­ing your message.

Avoid choos­ing a topic that is so broad that read­ers never know what to expect and don’t pick a topic so nar­row that after a week you are out of mate­r­ial to write on.

Step 2: To Host or Not To Host

Start­ing a blog comes with a few big deci­sions that will be impor­tant to you both now and espe­cially in the future. One of the biggest deci­sions will be whether you host the blog your­self (pay around $4-$9/month), or use free blog­ging ser­vices that host your blog for you.

Choos­ing to Be Free

Yes, it is free, but remem­ber noth­ing is ever really “free”. Start­ing a blog with a free ser­vice means you don’t get your own domain name [also called url or web address]. Instead of some­thing like BloggingMormon.com you get some­thing like bloggingmormon.blogspot.com (where there are a mil­lion other blogs at blogspot.com) and where you don’t actu­ally own the blog or have rights to its con­tent (the con­tent you put on it).

The major prob­lem is your domain name is more dif­fi­cult to remem­ber, your blog could be shut down at any time, and if you start get­ting lots of vis­i­tors you will want to move your blog any­ways to a more pro­fes­sional blog­ging service.

If you have no inten­tion of any­one ever read­ing your blog, get a free blog at Blogger.com.  If you would like search engines like Google to send you vis­i­tors and start get­ting lots of read­ers… then read the next section.

Cheap — Host Your Own Blog

I rec­om­mend this method for a few rea­sons.  Think of the web as a piece of vir­tual real estate.  If you own the land you have far more free­dom then if you rent it.  You pay $9 for a year of own­er­ship of your domain name (web address) you have exclu­sive access to your blog and can put what­ever you want there. This offers much more flex­i­bil­ity and free­dom to do what you want with your blog with­out wor­ry­ing about any­one tak­ing your blog down or mak­ing a mistake.

You will have your own domain name, like bloggingmormon.com. All you have to do is buy the address (domain name) and pay for host­ing ($4-$9/month). My expe­ri­ence has been fan­tas­tic and the flex­i­bil­ity is fan­tas­tic.  With most plans for host­ing you can quit when­ever you want and even sell your domain name if you decide to stop blogging.

Also, with a very pro­fes­sional free blog soft­ware “Word­Press”, you can have a blog that looks like you spent weeks design­ing it.  So if you want room to grow and flex­i­bil­ity to do what you want, I rec­om­mend fol­low­ing the instruc­tions below.

Step 3: Get a Domain Name

Find­ing your own domain name can be very fun. You already know what your blog’s topic is [step #1], so the first step to actual setup is by find­ing your blog a good domain name.  Some tips about domain names…

• Shorter the Bet­ter — you are much more likely to have read­ers come back to your blog if they can remem­ber it.  For exam­ple, would you remem­ber MyBlog.com or MyNewBlogIsAwesomeSoComeAndSeeIt.com?  The shorter the bet­ter. Try to use only 2 – 3 words in the name and avoid using spaces.  Also, try using a phrase that is easy to remem­ber and where the words make sense together.
• Be Descrip­tive — Explain in your domain name [w/ 2 – 3 words] what your blog is about. Try to put a key­word in your domain name that peo­ple will remem­ber you are blog­ging about “______”

The best places to find very cheap domain names are in my opin­ion Namecheap and Godaddy.  Both are trust­wor­thy sites I have used and you will get very cheap domain name prices there. [note: links are refer­rals from me]

Step 4: Get­ting a Web Host Setup For Your Blog

For me, the quick­est method to get a blog setup is to use a host­ing ser­vice offer­ing “one-click installs”, or nearly instant instal­la­tions for blog­ging or forum soft­ware.  Using this method is pretty easy, but like I said before you will need some tech­ni­cal skills (although very brief). If you want to take an easy approach but pay a few dol­lars more, use the domain name ser­vices above to also host your blog.  Then it is all just one easy process.  Oth­er­wise keep reading.

“1-click” (easy) Installation

Host­ga­tor Host­ing
For first-timers, I rec­om­mend Host­ga­tor because they have excel­lent sup­port staff that are avail­able 24/7 through IM, phone, email or any other major com­mu­ni­ca­tion source. I have used the sup­port before and have found them to actu­ally know what they are talk­ing about… which is a big deal!  They are also very afford­able which is impor­tant! Once you have your host­ing setup, with a click of your mouse you can install your blog soft­ware, Word­Press.  It’s so easy!

Just a warn­ing to you as well, using extremely cheap host­ing means you get what you pay for… prob­lems. Avoid using any host­ing ser­vice offer­ing $2 host­ing or below, you will regret it.

Step 5: Installing WordPress

If you choose to not setup with the 1-click installs and need help set­ting up word­press then here are your instruc­tions.  If you have expe­ri­ence with installing web appli­ca­tions that use mySQL, this could take as lit­tle as 5 min­utes to do, and the 5 steps below may be all you need, how­ever, if not don’t worry I will explain the process to you. I am also avail­able to help by just click­ing on “Setup My Blog”

Require­ments: To run Word­Press your host­ing ser­vice just needs 2 things:

• PHP ver­sion 4.2 or greater
• MySQL ver­sion 4.0 or greater

Most host­ing ser­vices do meet these require­ments, and for sure I know that Host­ga­tor, Godaddy, and Namecheap all have the appro­pri­ate php and mysql ver­sions to run Word­Press.  So if you go with a major host­ing ser­vice you do not even need to worry about this.

Cre­at­ing a Database

You will need to cre­ate a data­base in mysql to have your blog stored on your host­ing ser­vice.  If this doesn’t make sense to you, do not worry.  All you need to know is that your blog is stored in a data­base (fil­ing sys­tem) and you need to cre­ate a new one.

You can do this in your host­ing con­trol panel. If you aren’t sure you know how to do this, just ask your host­ing com­pany [this is why tech­ni­cal sup­port is impor­tant]. After you have set it up, you should have 3 pieces of infor­ma­tion about the data­base you should write down.
1. Data­base Name — The name of your new data­base.
2. User­name — your new data­base user­name.
3. Pass­word — Your new data­base password.

Down­load WordPress

This is going to be pretty easy. Go to WordPress.org and click on their big down­load but­ton to get the most recent ver­sion of the blog­ging soft­ware “Word­press”. You have a choice between the ZIP file or the TAR.GZ file. I down­load the ZIP file because it is less of a has­sle.  If you see a link to “get a free word­press blog” this is not what you want.  They are just try­ing to get you to make a blog just like blogspot and Blogger.com.

Decom­press the “Word­press” ZIP file.

All you will need to do is right-click on the file you down­loaded and then click on “extract all”.

Set­ting Up WordPress

Open the Word­Press folder you just unzipped (the file you extracted) and find the file named: wp-config-sample.php then rename the file to wp-config.php by right-clicking on the file and choos­ing “Rename”. Now open wp-config.php and insert the 3 pieces of infor­ma­tion I had you write down above about your data­base into the 3 fields below.  The areas in red are the words you replace and make sure to not lose the ’ ’ around the word.

Change:

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘word­press’);              // The name of the data­base
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘user­name’);                 // Your MySQL user­name
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘pass­word’);     // Your MySQL password

to

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘your­Data­base­Name’);           // The name of your data­base
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘your-username’);                      // Your MySQL user­name
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘your-password’);          // Your MySQL password

Choose Your Install Direc­tory and Upload Everything

If you want your blog to be at the main domain (called the root direc­tory) of your site (I rec­om­mend this for most blog­gers), mean­ing “yourdomain.com”, then open the unzipped word­press folder and upload all the files and fold­ers into your web root. Note, you need to open the file before load­ing the other files, once the file is open just use CTRL + A  on your key­board to select every­thing.  Then upload it.  If you already have a file called index.html, or index.php, you’ll need to rename it or get rid of it before you upload­ing everything.

If you want your word­press blog in a dif­fer­ent direc­tory of your web­site, like “yourdomain.com/blog”, then rename the “word­press” folder to “blog” and upload it to the root direc­tory with an ftp program.

Fin­ish and Install

In an inter­net browser (Fire­fox, Inter­net Explorer, Safari, etc.), go to the domain where you uploaded word­press (yourdomain.com), and then add /wp-admin/install.php to the end of your web address like this.. http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php  and fol­low the sim­ple direc­tions there.

You will then be given a new user­name and pass­word. Save it in a safe place and keep it pri­vate.  Word­Press will send you an email with the user­name and pass­word so save it for future reference.

You’re the proud owner of a new blog on the inter­net. Log in with your word­press user­name and pass­word and get started!

Learn More

Now that you have a blog.. be sure to check out our free blog­ging guide to blog­ging suc­cess­fully with our Learn to Blog, Setup a Blog, and Make Money Blog­ging pages.