Getting Free WordPress Templates

Most people who start a WordPress blog for their business purposes think that they will not have to dabble much with the design on the blog because of their impression of running a “serious” blog and not a pop fan site. However, the truth is that commercial websites, such as your website, need attention to design much more than a fan site. After all, it has to have appeal if you want to attract people to doing business with you. The best part with WordPress is that it helps you do this. … Continue Reading

Make Your WordPress Blog More Impressive With Plug-ins

One of the best advantages with a hosted blog is that you have the freedom to enhance it in a variety of ways. With WordPress blogs, there are numerous plug-ins and themes that you can use to make your blog not only more beautiful and customized to your purposes, but actually more functional for you and the reader. It is not at all necessary to use any of these actually – you can start with your WordPress blog without the plug-ins and themes – but definitely when you are into the blogging activity, you will want to do it. So here is a little information on how you go about with the plug-ins. … Continue Reading

How To Set Up Your Own Hosted WordPress Blog

Setting up a hosted WordPress blog may sound technical to most people, especially people who are looking at blogging for their business, but if you go about it systematically, you will find that it is not all as difficult as it is cracked up to be. In fact, a little down the line you will begin to enjoy blogging as well as tweaking the blog in order to make it better and better.

Here are the main steps you will need to follow to set up your own hosted WordPress blog.

Plan it Out First!

Don’t be in a hurry to start your blog. Think what you will do with it. Think of a suitable subject, even though you are working within your niche, you want it to be special. Think of what name you will have for your blog and even a catchphrase which you will use for the promotion.

Get the Domain Name

You can buy a domain name from many websites. You can even buy a domain name and give a subdomain name for each of your WordPress blogs. There are many places that you can purchase your domains from, I like to support a local company, so I purchase all my domains from HudsonValleyDomains.com.  They are a reseller for GoDaddy which is one of the most well-known domain vendors, but they are a local company.  I would appreciate you supporting HudsonValleyDomains.com, but you can always go directly to GoDaddy.com.

Buy Hosting

You will have to host your WordPress blog. You can get the domain name and hosting as a package, however that may not be the most cost effective option. If you intend to have multiple blogs, look for shared hosting options. However, in that case, you will have to think which blog will be your primary domain.  I highly recommend a HostGator as a hosting company, this is who I use for this website and hundreds of other ones that I operate.  You can get hosting for a virtually unlimited number of websites on a shared server for one very low price (sometimes under $5 per month for all your sites combined).  If you go with HostGator, you’ll be able to skip the following steps because they essentially do it for you.

Download WordPress

Go to WordPress.org. You will find an orange button on the right side for downloading the WordPress folder. Click on it, the download takes place automatically. Then click on the downloaded folder to decompress the files in it.

Upload WordPress Files on FTP Server

Open the root folder of your FTP server and copy the WordPress files onto it. Wait for the files to upload completely.

Set up MySQL

WordPress requires the MySQL database to run. This is where the blog will store the necessary files for its operations. The database will manage the content on your blog and make things simpler for you. For setting up the MySQL database you will have to go to the hosting control panel and set up the MySQL database that you will find there. You can give this database a name of your choice.

Install WordPress and Set it Up

The installation of WordPress begins directly when you type in the name of the domain that you have chosen. This is a self-leading process. Once the installation is done, you can give it a proper web address and you will be prompted to select a username and a password, which you can change later.

With this much, you are ready to post on your WordPress blog. However, you can definitely tweak it further with themes and plug-ins to make it more appealing to your visitors.

If You’re Using HostGator

Once you get your account setup at HostGator, you can just click on the “Fantastico Control Panel” and then click on “Install WordPress”.  This will automatically do everything outlined in the above steps and setup your entire WordPress system for you.

Free Blogs And Paid Blogs – Is Free Always Better?

If you are intending to start your own blog for your business, you will find out that there are two types of blogs out there – the free blogs and the paid blogs. The paid blogging services will require payments to be made per month or per year to keep maintaining the blog alive on the Internet. Also, these paid blogs may charge for additional services that they provide, such as allowing you to post affiliate ads on your blog (and thus make money out of it) or even to give you a domain name that you use for your blog. Free blogging services are as their name suggests – you do not need to pay for any of these services. … Continue Reading

Turning Your Blog Into An Authority Center

If you play your cards well with your blog, you may very well end up fashioning a niche authority center that people from all over the world will want to visit to find out what the concept is all about. For you, the Internet may be a channel of promoting your business, but for the vast bulk of Internet users around the world, the Internet is still a source of information. … Continue Reading

Making Your Blog A Separate Business Venture In Itself

Do you know that there a large number of people who are making money on the Internet only through blogging? Now, you may be having a blog only to promote your main venture, i.e. your business, but you should not downplay the potential of the blog itself in making money for you. After all, why are you in business? Surely to make some good money! For that kind of objective, the blog fits the bill quite nicely. There are ways to monetize your blog and at the same time improve the potential for getting prospects for your business through it. What can be better than that?

Let us see some of the ways in which expert marketers use their business blogs to make money for themselves: … Continue Reading

Outsourcing Your Blog Posting Needs And How To Do Well At It

It is too much to expect that you will be able to blog as much as you want, even if it is to take your business ahead. There are too many things that are going to occupy your time soon and you won’t find time to blog properly. Also, you may not really have the literary talent needed to rivet a potential visitor’s attention onto your blog. These things can but really take a toll on your business prospects. So, what can you do? … Continue Reading

Ideas On Making Powerful Posts On Your Blog

It is highly necessary that you keep your business blog updated as often as you can, but at the same time, it is not easy to get ideas to make these posts as often as you would like to. Even professional writers have their writer’s blocks, so it is not surprising that you, who are writing only for your business, will have these blocks too. But you have an advantage over professional writers and authors. You at least know the direction in which your post needs to be made. You are sure of what you want and you can use that knowledge to make effective posts.

The following are the five important characteristics of an effective post on a blog. Keep this in mind and you will see the ideas flowing in your mind. … Continue Reading

How Often Must An Ideal Blog Be Updated?

Any person who has read the A-B-C of blogging will know that the readers of a blog can be increased by making as frequent blog posts as possible. There is a reason that has to do with search engine optimization. Search engine spiders are always interested in finding the most regularly updated blogs and websites because they are of the opinion that these will provide more qualitative content to the searchers. For that reason, search engine spiders crawl blogs better. Now, if you have a blog for your business and you are not updating it, it is already dead in the water. The search engines are not going to rank it. … Continue Reading

Your MLM Blog – Make The Connection With Your Visitors

Prospecting has immense importance in the world of network marketing. But at the same time, your prospecting must be fruitful, because everything depends on the size of the network that you build. When you are prospecting, the following three points become of the highest significance: … Continue Reading