7 Steps to Getting Your Own Blog Setup

Earlier this week we discussed blogging and the benefits blogging for your business.  But, how do you do it?  Well, there are several ways to go about it, here’s just a few.

Free Blogging – Hosted

• There are tons of free and easy-to-setup options out there, ripe for the picking.  Two of the most common and popular hosted (we’ll get into that term in a minute) are Wordpress.com and Blogger.com, the latter having been acquired by google back in 2003.  While you may have heard of Blogger, and not Wordpress, Wordpress still remains a much more competent blogging platform allowing more features and customizable options than anything out there.
• Both are super easy to set up, all you have to do is go to their respective sites and create a new account.  Once you create an account, it is pretty straightforward on how to get started.  I’m particularly partial to Wordpress.com as I use the “self-hosted” Wordpress blogging platform, and I have been very pleased with their feature set.  Wordpress also offers a whole online community of support.  If you go to Wordpress.com and click the Support tab at the top, the first thing listed at the top is “How do I start blogging?“  Also, Wordpress offers Domain Mapping, or the capability to make it look like your blog is at a particular domain name, e.g. www.Whatever.com, instead of whatever.wordpress.com.  Although you do have to pay for that feature (still only $15/year, including the domain registration), this is a great way to make you look way cooler very easily.

Paid Blogging – Self-Hosted

• On one hand, you have the blogging platforms that take care of everything for you.  You go to their web site, log in and update your blog.  You don’t have to manage files, facilitate updates, or worry about having a server.  But, on the other hand, you don’t have control of all your data, you have limited capabilities with full customization and you don’t have access to the code that makes everything work behind the scenes.  Now, in order to move into the wonderful world of self-hosted blogging platforms, you do have to have a little technical knowledge of html, php, and server control panels, but don’t be scared off – it’s all quite easy, I figured it all out on my own with a little help from various customer support groups.
• First thing is you need to get a hosting account.  You don’t actually have to worry about buying a server and paying your cable company $500/month for a T1 connection – just go to Hostmonster.com, IXWebhosting.com or HostGator.com adn sign up for an account.  Hosting plans range from $4 per month up to $12 per month on “shared” hosting plans.  You can get a dedicated server starting from about $160 per month, but don’t think you have to go that route.  I’ve been using shared server plans for years with sites that, collectively, see more than 150,000 page views per month and have rarely had any problems (the problems I did have were promptly taken care of by the included customer support).
• Before you get all set up, you’ll need to pick out a domain name.  GoDaddy.com, SpeedyDomain.com are two of the more common registrars, but there are tons to pick from.  I’ve used GoDaddy for years and like to keep all my stuff there.  Any hosting company you use can do this for you, but I like to keep it all centralized, so I’ve stuck with GoDaddy over the years.
• The control panel is pretty straight forward, and the customer support with whatever hosting company you decide to use will be glad to walk you though how to get all set up.  If you have any aptitude for computers or using software, you should have no problems.  No technical knowledge is needed, you’re basically learning a new application.  You will, however, need to have some knowledge of how ftp uploads work, in case you need to upload anything to your server.  There are plenty of free ftp clients out there – I use Filezilla.  However, most hosting plans offer the capability to install popular blogging platforms in addition to automatically creating the database that keeps all your blogging information.
• Again, I’m totally partial to Wordpress; that’s what I use, I’m familiar with it and I’ve found that it is the most supported and feature rich system out there.   So, once you get Wordpress all set up, you’ve got to pick out your theme and plugins.  There are tons of themes and plugins available and Wordpress makes it super easy to get them onto your blog.  For plugins, all you have to do is go to the plugin section on the control panel of your blog and click “add new”.  The system will install it on your server and activate them for you.  For themes, it can be just as easy.  Just go to the appropriate section in your control panel and click “browse for themes”.

Now, depending on your technical knowledge of html and working with web applications you may have a natural lean towards self-hosting or hosted-elsewhere.  I will warn you that going the self-hosted route, if you are not familiar with the technology can be a daunting task and will take some time to learn.  If you are looking for a quick way to get set up, I would definitely recommend setting up a Wordpress.com account.

Similar Posts

None Found

Comments

About Author