Blog Building: Putting It All Together!
Now that you have your domain name and hosting package and everything’s connected, there’s one last question to answer before putting it all together.
What blogging software are you going to use?
There are many good software options available, some free and some paid. With my years of blogging experience, I’ve tried quite a few of them. With that experience in mind, I highly recommend WordPress. It’s easy to use, has lots of features built in, thousands of plugins available for additional features, and enough theme choices available to fit any design you want. WordPress is the most popular, widely used blogging software available and it’s number one for a reason. Best of all, it’s free!
Ready to put it all together?
Log into your web hosting account and select Fantastico from your cPanel screen by clicking on the smiley face.
In the Fantastico menu, click on WordPress in the left-hand menu and then on the “New Installation” link.
Fill in the required information on the next screen, click on Install WordPress and follow the directions.
That’s it! You’ve just installed your blog! That was a lot easier than you thought, wasn’t it? Now you can log into WordPress and start looking around. The link to your admin panel will be provided at the end of the installation process.
Spend some time getting familiar with WordPress and your admin panel. Read the introductory post added to your blog during the installation process. Try deleting it and adding your own introductory post, welcoming future readers to your blog.
At this point, you actually have a working blog. You can post on it, promote it, anything you like. You don’t have to change a thing if you don’t want to, but the default blog is pretty boring and boring won’t get you very far. You need to make this blog your own. Put your personality into it. Make it yours! To do that, you need to find a theme.
We’ll cover themes and how to install them in my next post. Until then, you can start looking at the available options by clicking on “Appearance” in the WordPress admin menu and then on the Install Themes tab at the top. Select “Featured,” “Newest,” or “Recently Updated” just above the search bar or use the search options to find available themes. You can also do a search for WordPress themes on Google and find thousands of additional options.
If you have any questions or need help with your WordPress installation, please leave a comment or contact me. I’m always happy to help a fellow blogger in need.
