Start Your Own WordPress Blog in Just 3 Easy Steps!

It sounds like you are ready to get started on the creative freedom to start your own WordPress blog. The blogosphere is an amazingly rewarding dimension that has a high payoff in terms of the ability to creatively express yourself with relatively low barriers to entry.

By The Time You Finish Reading This Article You Will Have a WordPress Blog!

However, a bit of technical savvy IS necessary to get to the point where you are ready to go live, but honestly, only AFTER you’ve gotten the basic blog setup started. In my opinion doing a bunch of R&D (as some sites I’ve read advocate) on a site you have yet to work with hands-on is useless, the best way to learn is to get that blog started today and fiddle with it in real time.

For example, no amount of reading about web templates and plugins will prepare you for how they will interact once you start using them – some plugins disable others, some plugins take away features from your template that were previously there, some templates don’t allow certain features that you might like, etc. It is all theoretical until you get that blog off the ground.

Please note that you will need to pay for web hosting and your domain name! I am not selling products here, only recommending services that I currently use. If you are not willing to shoulder the minimal financial burden it takes to start your own WordPress blog, then you are not committed and should walk away now or return when you are ready. It is an inefficient use of your time and money to commit resources to something that you will not follow through with.

However, if you were like me when I first started my blog, revved up and raring to go, then let’s get started!!!

Ok, enough of the pep talk! I’m going to walk you through this and by the time you are finished reading this article, you will have a WordPress.org blog. Please bear in mind that I will show you how to create a WordPress.org blog using Bluehost only, these steps and parameters might not apply to other platforms and hosts, besides WordPress and Bluehost play very nicely together!

NEW SITE FROM SCRATCH – DOMAIN NAME & HOSTING NEEDED

Step 1. Sign Up With Bluehost

• Go to Products > WordPress Hosting
• Choose the “WordPress Hosting” option
• Register the domain name you would like (think very carefully about this!)
• Sign up for Bluehost as a part of the registration process
• Make sure you choose a strong password
• You can sort through the many options they will offer you while you register
• When you are in your Bluehost cPanel have a look around

Step 2. Install WordPress – it’s as easy as one click!

• While in the Bluehost portal, go to the Home tab
• Go down to the Helpful Links block and choose “create new site” under the WordPress column
• Follow the prompts to enter your site information (title and tagline)
• While there, choose “Advanced” and set your WordPress Admin Username now! If you don’t WP will choose one for you!
• Again, choose a strong password (make it a different password from Step 1 for security purposes)
• You will be shown a confirmation screen with your login url (screenshot this for your records!)
• Screenshot that information so you can log in to WP.org in Step 3 (also until you get comfortable with how you will log in)

Step 3. Log in to your site url they give you in Step 2.

• Bluehost now takes you directly to your WordPress page . . . however
• The url should be <yoursite.com/wp-login.php>. Please note you are not logging in at Bluehost or WordPress, but your new site url that is listed in Step 2 (well, you are technically logging into wp.org, but through your site url and not through their main page)
• Check out your WordPress dashboard, get to know it
• Bookmark your new login url to make it easier to find in the future
• Get started!

MIGRATE FROM WORDPRESS.COM TO WORDPRESS.ORG

1. Sign up for hosting at Bluehost
2. Install WP in Bluehost
3. Screenshot your details for later
4. Go to wp.COM and point your name servers <– this is the most crucial step in the whole entire world in order to succeed at this and not go permanently mad!
5. Export your site xml
6. Wait until the name servers have the time to redirect (up to 72 hrs)
7. Log in to your site url from step 3
8. Upload your xml file from step 5
9. Get started!

Something to Consider
It is actually easier to start your own WordPress blog from scratch rather than signing up with WP.COM. I would advise against WP.COM, it is kind of a waste of time if you want to really get creative with your blog in terms of content manipulation and design. I initially made this mistake and that is why I would not recommend it.

There is a vibrant community on there full of good people but the platform is very static and limited in many respects. An example of a major deterrent is the fact that the templates do not translate from COM to ORG felicitously; you will have to completely redo your template and all the work you saved.

As you can see there are fewer technical steps in setting up your own WP.ORG site versus having to migrate over, that should tell you all you need to know! Actually, it’s pretty easy moving a website from one domain to another using FTP.

External Resources
Here are a few resources that I found super beneficial in my quest to figure all this out! I started back in the day from scratch with only marginal knowledge about ftp and http, not that I’m some web guru now but basically I had to go into sleuth-mode on a daily basis to figure all this out. I just have a healthy dose of tenacity when it comes to what I want!!!

I’m happy to share these resources, I’m sure there are tons more out there that are just as worthy, happy hunting!

wpbeginner =  an excellent site for using WordPress! Well written and friendly staff!

yoast = the best place to get SEO

moz = one of the gurus of webpage development, especially SEO!

w3 schools = the holy grail for learning about code!

wordpress.org forums = troubleshooting forums.

wordpress.org codex = need help with your wp coding?