How To Start A Blog: A Complete Guide

Written by Steven Chang.  Updated November 2009.

This guide is intended to show you how you can set up your blog on your own domain (ie. your own .com web address).  At the end of this tutorial you should be able to go from completely clueless to having your very own blog on your own .com domain name.

Rough estimate to follow and complete the steps described in this guide is 15 minutes.  As you gain familiarity with the process you can actually launch another brand new blog in under 5 minutes!

Decide on a topic

The very first thing you need to decide is what you want to blog about.

Ask yourself what you are passionate about, because when you are passionate about a certain topic you can never seem to run out of things to say.

The topic can be broad or narrow – it’s really up to you.

Register your domain name

Once you’ve picked your topic or what you want to blog about, it’s time to get a name for your web address.

Go to http://www.wholesalerdomains.com and start searching for your desired domain name:

Ideally you would want to include your topic in your domain name.  For example, if you want to keep a blog of all jokes that came your way, then it wouldn’t be a bad idea to call it “funnyonly.com” – sorry it’s taken, and that’s my wife’s blog

You may have to keep trying new names as good names are most likely registered by someone else.  Search for the .COM of your desired domain name, if you absolutely can not find a .COM of your liking, then you may have to settle for a .NET or a .ORG extension.

It may also be a good idea to register the .COM, .NET, and .ORG of your domain name to secure your “brand.”

Get Web Hosting

A good name needs a good home – and that’s where web hosting comes in.  A web hosting account is where the blog software is going to reside.  It provides the storage space for the blog and all its data/posts.

Here are some good web hosting companies that I am personally using.  They pretty much range from $7 to $10/month and it’s a necessary evil for having your own blog on your own domain name.

For around $10/year in domain registration and $7/month in web hosting it’s relatively inexpensive – later on I will show you how to recoup your basic cost of running a blog (and turn it into a business if you would like).

After you purchase web hosting you should have received an email with your account information – this is important so please save it!  In that email it will also tell you what the Nameservers are for the web host – note that down because you will be needing it next.

Note: These web hosting companies that I recommended should allow you to host multiple domains.  In other words, you can use one web host account to power many blogs.

Point your domain name to the web host

This step is important because it tells the domain name where it is going to look for your web host.

Login to your WholesalerDomain.com account and click on the “Domain Manager” menu link.  A new window will popu up and your domamins will be listed.  Click on the domain name and you will see this window popping up:

Now click on the existing Nameservers and another window will pop up allowing you to change the current Nameservers setting.

This is where you input the 2 Nameservers your web host has provided you.

Once the Nameservers are updated there will be a lag time for your ISP to be notified of this update.  Usually this will only take a few minutes, but could take up to few hours.

Check that your domain is pointing to the web host

Now type in your newly registered domain name into the web browser and you should be getting a really bare-bone webpage that looks similar to this:

If you see a webpage that’s other than “This webpage can not be found,” then congratulations!  You have just completed the most boring steps of starting a blog.

Point-and-Click install the blog software

When it comes to choosing a blog software, Wordpress will undoubtedly be your first choice – it is by far the most popular blogging software being used.

In fact, it is so popular that the web host’s control panel has a point-and-click installation available (long gone are the days of FTP and HTML editor).

Login to your web hosting’s control panel (usually cPanel) by going to:

http://yourdomain.com/cpanel

and substitute yourdomain.com with your actual domain name, then type in your login credentials (check with your web host welcome email).

Scroll down in the cPanel and you should see an icon that says “Fantastico” – this is the tool we want to use to install your blog:

Once you get to Fantastico you will be presented with a bunch of software that you will be able to click-install (okay, don’t get too excited now!).

Click on “Wordpress”:

Then “New Installation”:

Then proceed to completing the installation form (read the form instructions!) and the rest of the installation steps:

Once installation is complete your blog should be up and running!  The following steps are completely optional, but highly recommended.

Customizing your blog

To make your blog unqiue, you may want to give it a new facelift.  In Wordpress these “faces” are called Themes and there are tons of free ones out there.

Just head over to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ and browse or search for a theme that fits your topic.

Alternatively, there are themes that you can buy which makes your blog stand out even more (they tend to be more feature rich and only a limited number of people use the same theme as you).

Once you’ve got a theme picked out, go ahead and download the theme file (a .zip file).

Now go back to your web host’s cPanel account (http://yourdomain.com/cpanel -> substitute yourdomain.com with your real domain name) and click on File Manager icon:

Then you would want to browse to public_html/[blog root]/wp-content/themes folder

If you installed your blog in the root directory then it will simply be public_html/wp-content/themes

Once you are in the /themes folder click on “Upload file(s)” link and upload the theme zip file you’ve downloaded.

Once the file is uploaded the zip file will show up in the file manager.  Click on the file name and then click on “Extract File Contents:

Now the theme is ready to be activated.  Go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin and login to the Wordpress Dashboard (this is where you can post/edit/delete blog posts and pages, and change settings for your blog).

Once logged in click on Appearance -> Themes link and you will see a thumbnail of the newly uploaded theme under “Available Themes”:

Go ahead and click on the thumbnail and activate the theme.  Now your blog has a new face!  Check it out in the browser.

What’s next?