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.
