How to Start a Blog

Web Hosting, WordPress and Sharing Your Ideas

So you are at the point I was a little while ago. You have these wonderfully yummy recipes or beautiful designs and want to share them. Great! Don’t wait, start your blog.

If you want to start a blog, but don’t know yet what about, think of what you could write that might interest others. Maybe you are very interested in health and natural medicines and would like to share that knowledge. In my opinion it is very important to make a blog about something that you are passinonate about. It will help you to come up with new ideas and keep you going. A blog takes time. Don’t forget that.

The basic steps to set up your blog are pretty easy. The easiest way, of course, is to hire somebody. Well, that is not cheap. So try it yourself as I did and build your own website, self-hosted with WordPress. Prices start at $2,95 a month for hosting and the theme can cost up to $130,- But there are ten thousands of themes for free, too. It all depends what you prefer. I used a free theme and am very happy with it up to now.

So here are the steps:

1. Think of a name for your blog and then purchase the matching domain.
   This is a very important step. You need a good name, one that is memorable. It took me about 5 days to come up with my blog’s name. So don’t despair if you can’t think of a good name right away. Talk with family and friends about it, it really helps.
   Once you have your name, check if the matching domain is still available. There are quite a few domain checkers out there. If your domain is free buy it and you are done with step one.
2. Find a good and reliable web host. There are many out there. Look at them and compare. I for example use Bluehost. The web host stores your website on their servers. It “lives” there. At Bluehost you can also directly check your domain availability before you select a plan. The starter plan is normally enough in the beginning.
3. Install WordPress. It is really the top-of-the-line, industry standard blogging software. Best part: It is free. With Bluehost it will be installed automatically, which is really nice.
4. Install a WordPress Theme. This is how you make your blog look good. There are over 10 000 free themes, but of course you can buy one, too. This step took me quite some time. You have to go through the different themes and pick the one that fits your blog the best. I think I tried out 10 or so before finding the one I wanted. It is not only about looks, but also about functionality. So play with it a little. See what colors you can use or what fonds and whatever else is important to you. But don’t worry. If you find a better theme later, you can migrate your entire site to it with a click of a button.
5. Set up tools and plug-ins. A lot of these will be recommended to you automatically, but I also researched them on Google. They help you analyze your site, add security & extra features and generally improve the functionality of your site. Sounds complicated, but you will see it is quite easy.
6. Start blogging!