Its easy to start a blog these days, all you need is a domain name and a web host don’t even have to stress your self on hiring a web developer to create your blog for you because you can use content management system such as WordPress to create your blog within 10 minutes
if you have never used Wordpress before or you have never even thought about building a website before, then this post is for you. If you start from the beginning and don’t leave anything behind, you will have a working WordPress site at the end of this post where you can publish your first post.
Things Needed To Start A Blog
- Web Hosting – this is a web server where your blog files are stored
- Domain name – this is what people will type into the address bar to access your website
- Blogging platform – such as WordPress and this is what you will use to create your blog
How to create a blog
1. Set Up Your Web Hosting and Domain Name
Before you can build your blog you need a domain name and a web host without these things you cant install WordPress and have a website that lives on the internet. So your domain name is what people will type into the address bar to access your website (e.g. freewareshome.com), Your web browser communicates with the server and displays files on your website. In this case, these files are your WordPress blog
first, open the WordPress hosting site managed by HostGator. You will see that there are many different packages to choose from:
In general, it’s better to connect to a standard or business package, because this package gives you the freedom to add more domains to your hosting account and has more features.
When you have decided on a plan, click the “Buy Now!” Button. On the next screen, you can add the domain to your order.
The domain search function is integrated into the login page so the tool looks for each domain that you enter and shows you which domain name extensions are available.
After finding the perfect domain, you can enter payment information to complete the purchase and register officially!
After completing registration, you will receive an email from HostGator containing your cPanel link. This control panel is used to install WordPress. So watch this email before proceeding to the next step.
2. Install WordPress on Your Site
You can do all kinds of beautiful things with the HostGator Control Panel, but for our purposes, we will use it to install WordPress.
Luckily, some tools make this process as easy as clicking a few buttons. To install WordPress, click the link in the Control Panel that you received in the welcome e-mail, then enter your username and password.
You can quickly install WordPress by clicking on the “Create a new WordPress site” icon. Also, scroll down to the Software section and click the Quick Install application.
The easiest way to do this lesson is to click on the “Create a New WordPress Site” application.
On this screen, select the domain name where you want to install WordPress and click Next.
On the next page, enter your blog name, administrator user name, administrator email address, and your name. The administrator’s email is important because your WordPress credentials will be sent here.
After the installation is complete, you will be taken to the confirmation screen. Login information is displayed on this screen and also sent by email. Make sure you keep it in a safe place because we need it to complete your website setup.
3. Install and Customize Your WordPress Theme
Now you have bought your domain name and your host and you have also installed WordPress on your site but You can’t customize your site yet. To do this, you need to install a WordPress theme. A theme is a collection of templates and style sheets that determine the appearance of a WordPress website.
To install a new theme on your website, we continue with the first login in your WordPress dashboard. To do this, use a link that looks like this: “mywebsite.com/wp-admin”. On this screen, enter your username and password and click “Enter”.
This will take you to the WordPress dashboard, which is your base for personalizing your website. This will look more or less like the image below:
by default every new WordPress site uses a basic WordPress theme However, you might want to change it to a theme that is more relevant to your site.
To do this, open Appearance> Themes in the left navigation bar and click “Add new”. On the next screen, you can choose from thousands of different free themes available on the WordPress Themes Store.
To view themes created specifically for the blog layout, click Feature Filter. In the Subject column, check Blog, then click Apply Filter.
You will now see the perfect theme for blogging. You can filter further by adding keywords such as music, movies, recipes, etc. To display themes that fit your niche.
Make sure you choose a WordPress theme that is mobile responsive, fast, and search engine oriented. You can check these requirements in the theme’s documentation.
After you find a theme that you like, you can click the Preview button to get an idea of how the theme is like, when you are done go to that theme and click “Install”. After clicking Install, WordPress will install the theme for you. All you have to do is click on the Activate button after the installer is finished.
This theme will now become the new face of your WordPress blog. You can further customize your site by clicking Appearance> Customize. Here you get a number of customization options, e.g. For example, changing your website’s color scheme, adding a background image, changing your logo, and more. The customization options you have depended on the theme you have installed.
Play around with the Customize menu until you create a blog design that you like
Create a Site Menu for Your WordPress Blog
You must create a site navigation menu to make site navigation easier. Your theme may have created the main menu for your site. If not, here’s how to enter your menu area and create a new menu.
Open Appearance> Menu in your WordPress dashboard.
From this screen, you can create new menu items, rearrange your menus, choose from existing pages, and assign your menus to various locations on your site.
Add New Pages to Your WordPress Blog
WordPress treats your page as your post. But in our case, our pages are things like our homepage, pages, contact pages and more.
Almost every type of website requires this standard page. They may come in advance if WordPress is installed. If not, you want to make it yourself.
To do this navigate to Pages>Add New.
for a new blog, it is useful to have a homepage, about page, and contact us page
Customize Your WordPress Sidebar
One of the last things we want to adjust is our sidebar. This is the area to the right of your text and is widely used on many popular blogs. In this area, you usually present your latest posts, add email inboxes, add ad space and more.
We will personalize this area with what are called widgets. This is a drag and drop area that adds new features to our sidebar.
Navigate to Appearance> Widgets and you will see a screen like the following.
Then in the “Main Sidebar” section, we can drag the widget to the left into the “Main Sidebar” field. You can add things like image galleries, recent posts, search bars, special text and more.
In this widget area, you can also adjust other widget aspects of your topic, e.g. B. footer area, some parts of home page sections and more.
When you install certain WordPress plugins, they sometimes add widgets to that area.
Install plugins
WordPress uses plugins to manage site customization. This way you can add new features such as social sharing buttons, speed optimization features, image slider, SEO optimization and more.
To add a new plugin to your blog, go to Plugins> Add New.
Here you can search for popular plugins, search for keywords or even install them from the list of recommended plugins. With thousands of different WordPress plugins to choose from,
When you find the plugin you want to install, hover over it and click “Install Now” and then “Activate”.
Publish Your First Blog Post on WordPress
Creating a blog on WordPress is very easy. Go to Posts -> Add New and you will see a text editor where you can write a blog post.
When you finish writing your post, you can click the Preview button to see what it looks like. When you are satisfied with your post, click the Publish button and voila! Your first blog post is live!
If you want to see all the posts you wrote or want to delete certain posts, go to Posts> All Posts.
