Blogging for Profits Series Part 3: Setting Up Your Wordpress Blog

Blogging for Profits Series Part 3: Setting Up Your WordPress Blog

Congratulations! Now that you're ready to take action, your first action step is to actually set up your WordPress blog. If you're not familiar with WordPress, it is an open source, free blogging software, that millions of bloggers use. There are certainly other blogging software available but WordPress is THE number one choice.

This portion of the Blogging for Profits Series is a little techie. But don't be intimidated because it's only a matter of time and you'll find how breeze it is to set-up a WordPress blog! About few weeks ago, I posted a two-part blog called a Simple Guide to Setting Up Your Own WordPress Blog. Being that I come from a technical background, I never use Fantastico to set up anything on the CPanel. Thus on that blog, what I illustrated was how to set-up WordPress based on the instructions on WordPress.org which is a little bit complicated.

On this post, however, I will illustrate how to use Fantastico in the set-up.

Since we're going to use a self-hosted, stand alone WordPress, you are going to need the following:

1. Your Own Domain Name
Having your own domain name is a must. There are some bloggers that use their name but there are also those that prefer not to use their name. For my own blog, I decided not to use my own name because I have a goal in mind in the future.

It is totally up to you on what you want to use but here are some quick tips:
a. Avoid using a very long domain name such as www.thisismydomainnameandyoufindmehereblog.com.
b. Make sure it is easy to remember.
c. Make it catchy if possible.
d. If possible, incorporate it with a main keyword for your niche (only if it will not make the domain long).

I highly recommend Godaddy.com to register your domain name with simply because they offer the cheapest domain name registration out there. Normally, it is $10.49 for a year but if you use OYH10 before June 31,2010, you can get about a $3.00 off.

Although I recommend Godaddy for hosting, I do not recommend them for hosting. I don't believe they use CPanel for their back-end management and their servers are not as fast as HostGator.

2. Get a Hosting Plan

If you are not committed yet with any hosting company, I highly recommend HostGator.com. They have very good customer and technical support, blazing fast servers, and best of all, they use a back-end software called Cpanel, which is the easiest software out there and the tutorial on this blog post is based on Cpanel.

To begin with, you can just subscribe to their Baby Plan which is $7.95/month and it gives you unlimited domains, unlimited disk space and band width.

Once you subscribed, you will receive an email with hosting information.If you choose to go with HostGator.com, your nameservers will be ns1.hostgator.com and ns2.hostgator.com. If you did not go with Hostgator, be sure to look out for that information and as soon as you have it, go back to your Godaddy account and change the nameservers information there. This quick guide from Godaddy should help you.

As soon as you have the two items above set in place, it's time to install WP using Fantastico. In the hosting email you have received, it should have a link to the cpanel which is usually yourdomainname.com/cpanel and the log-in information.

1. When you log-in, you should see something similar below. Look for the Fantastico icon which is a blue smiley face and then click on it.

2. When you're in Fantastico, look for the WordPress link and click on it.

3. Click on New Installation.

4. Fill in the necessary information and then hit the Install WordPress button.

If the installation is successful, you will get a screen that says so. Go ahead and log-in the WP admin panel using the user name and password that you have entered above to make sure that the credentials work.

If it works, you're done with Action Step #1! Give yourself a pat in the back! The next part of the series is another technical aspect but it's going to be fun! I will show you how to customize your WordPress blog to make it look more professional!

Hope you find this guide useful and if you do, please feel free to share them to your friends, family, and colleagues! Show me some love too by leaving me comments below!

If you have any questions, just ask away and I'd be happy to answer!

Until then!…

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Comments (2)

Sheryl Theis says:

June 2, 2010 at 9:43 PM

Well, it’s taking me just a few minutes to get there but I am getting there; just waiting for the transfer to happen. Am really computer literate but the WordPress was a small challenge, but one learned at least!

Thanks for your step by step blog in helping to install WP!! The pictures help illustrate greatly to know what page and where to find the information needed from the beginning to the end-Fantastic job Lynne! )

Sheryl Theis
SET The Mark Bookkeeping

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Why You Must Have a Blog No Matter What Type of Business You Have : Alliance of Online Entrepreneurs says:

June 20, 2010 at 10:23 PM

[...] my Blogging for Profit Series, I showed how to set-up your own WordPress Blog. Click here to follow a step by step instruction and you will be well on your way to [...]

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