June 25, 2010

Setting a blog up in today’s world is a lot easier than it used to be and much easier than you might think. This is not a long technical process like many people would have you believe. The process of setting up a Wordpress blog is a simple step-by-step process.

if you follow along and take action, by the end you will have your very own blog up and running.

First I am going to explain the difference between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org as there is often confusion. Wordpress.com is a service which provides you with an up and running blog, you do not have to install it or maintain it but there are restrictions - You cannot upload any plugins or themes, you have to work with what is offered to you, and you are not allowed to have ads or banners on your blog, it can and does work well for many people but it is worth reading the terms and conditions before signing up. WordPress.org is an open-source web-based application which you are free to do with as you please, which makes it highly powerful and is very user friendly. This Wordpress How To Guide will be walking you through the steps of setting up the latter of the two.

1. You will need to setup a hosting service and a domain name before you can install Wordpress. I use BlueHost.com, but there are many other services available. Speak to friends and family to see if they can recommend a service to you. Depending on the type of blog you are setting up will depend on your domain name, but using your name for a personal blog would be a good choice, or the name of your company if it’s for business. Now that you have your hosting service and your domain name all setup we can now start with the installation of Wordpress.

2. The first thing you will need to do is login to the Cpanel of your hosting service. Once you have logged in to the Cpanel, scroll down the page until you find the ‘Software/Services’ tab, locate the ‘Simple Script’ icon and click it.

3. You will now see a list of scripts which are available to you, but you are only interested in WordPress at this time. Look down the page and you will see a title for ‘Blogs’, under that title you will find Wordpress, click the link to start the install process.

4. You will now be at the Wordpress install page ready to start installing. Once you have read through the page click on the green ‘Install Now’ button. You will now be at the ‘Step 1: Installation Preferences’. The first thing you need to do is select the version of Wordpress you would like to install, always make sure this is set to the latest version with the exception of a beta version. Now you will need to select which domain name you are going to be installing on. The domain name you chose when you setup your hosting service will appear in the drop down menu which can be changed if and when you have more than one domain name. You can also enter a directory name for which you would like to install onto, like I have done for example - my blogs web address is www.wordpresshowto.biz/blog. Alternatively you can leave it blank which will make your URL www.yourdomainname.com. In ‘Step 2: Advanced Options’ enter the name of your site in the box provided in my case I will enter ‘Wordpress How To’, now tick the box to ‘Automatically create a new database’. Final in ‘Step 3 Legal Information’ read and tick the box to agree, then tick the ‘Complete’ button.

5. Once Simple Scripts has finished setting up your WordPress blog you will be presented with your Site URL, Login URL, Username and Password. Your  installation is now complete and you can view your blog by clicking on the site URL link. You probably won’t think much of the look of your site at the moment but this can all be changed and you can have a lot of fun doing it, and again none of this is technical - it can all be done very easily and as I just said it’s also good fun.

Thank you for taking the time to read and I hope you enjoy using Wordpress

Alester Fox:-)
Wordpress How To

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