How To Create A Blog?

I believe you are here because you already know the advantages of blogging. I am not going to waste your time by explaining the history of blogging and telling you all the great advantages of having a blog.

You will become a proud owner of a great blog site by the end of this series. I am giving you step by step instructions with illustrations to make your job really easy.

Do not forget that you can create any of the following web site types with only few clicks using this method.

We are covering the following important parts here in this post.

1. How To buy and setup a Domain Name for your blog?

2. How to set up hosting for your blog?

3. How to install your blog – Step by step guidance with examples.

Before moving further, let me tell you what I am planning to cover in this “create a blog and make money blogging series” I have seen some web sites charging over $100 to give away this information. You are lucky that you found us today :-)

Click on the links in the index to browse all other topics. This series is 60% completed at the moment and all the links will be activated within the next 2 weeks. Let’s get your web site started Today!!!

1. How To buy and setup a Domain Name?

First things first. You need to get a domain name if you want to create a blog. I am begging you not to go with a free domain name which will look filthy cheap. No body will take you seriously. It will not cost you more than $10 so always try to buy a .com/ .org/ .net or a country domain name.

Please do not use free wordpress or blogger accounts as they do not belong to you. The web sites you create using these platforms belongs to Google and Wordpress and they can shut down your site any time they want.

You must have 100% ownership of your web site. So do not think twice when spending $8- $10 to get your own domain name. It is very important to have full authority over the blog site you are going to create.

The best option for you is to have a wordpress platform with paid hosting and a paid domain.

I use GoDaddy
to fulfill all my domain name requirements. There are thousands of alternatives but to my knowledge they are the best in the business and the cheapest.

So I purchase my domain names from them and host it elsewhere. You can choose any service but in this post I will use my service providers as examples.

Go to GoDaddy
and check whether the domain name you want is available.

Type the domain name you wish to buy and hit the ” Go” button. If the name is available you will get something like this.

Scroll down to the bottom and click the “proceed to check out” button. Do not play with other options if you do not know what you are doing.

If they try to give you more options just click ” no thanks” and go to the next page. You can select the registration length, and add hosting plans from here.

If I were you, I will not buy any hosting plans from them and just get the domain name only. But I must say, they give pretty good deals when you buy hosting plans together with domain names.

Once you select the registration length scroll down the bottom and select “No thanks. I’m ready to checkout.”

Now you are in the final stage of getting a domain name of your own and become a proud owner of a internet real estate :-) Review your shopping cart carefully, then select the payment method you wish to use, agree to the terms and select check out now.

Now you have a domain name of your own. Let’s proceed to the next important part in creating a blog.

2. How To Host Your Web Site.

I hope you know the fact that just by having a domain name you cannot go live with a web site. You need to have a server in order to host your blog site files. Fortunately this is not costly nor it is not difficult to set up the system.

I will explain you step by step on ” how to host your web site” on a 3rd party server. And also how to install blogs, forums, classified sites..etc in just few clicks without a sweat.

In order to do this, your hosting provider should have the Fantastico utility. I came across many providers who offer this facility but the best in the business is hostgator

All my web sites are hosted with hostgator ( all 14 of them) but I do not have a single complain about them.

With hostgator’s fantastico deluxe plugging, Not only blogs, But you can build any of the following web site types very easily.

classified sites.
Content management sites.
Customer Relationship sites.
Forums.
E-Commerce Sites.
Image Galleries.
Polls and surveys sites.
Project management sites.
Wiki sites.
And much much more…….

How To Install Your Blog

Once you open an account with your web host
( Later I will show you how to do that) you can access their cpanel using the link they send to your email.

Once you go to the cpanel, you will see the fantastico deluxe plugging icon which is highlighted in the above image. Double click it.

In the left hand corner you will see all the scripts you can install. In the blogging section you will see 3 types of blogging platforms which you can use. “wordpress” is the best tool without a question. click on that.

Things are just getting easier. Click on the ” new installation” link.

That is it. Choose a user name and a password and you are done. Can it get easier than this? Now you can log in to the wordpress admin area and start adding content to your blog. Beleive me, even a 10 year old can figure out how to do that. Wordpress is very user friendly.

I will be covering the wordpress essentials here.

Many web masters will hate me now. But with these instructions any person can build a blog site now.

Setting Up Your Hosting Account.

Although I talked about using Fantastico utility and creating a web site, I could not explain how to set up your hosting account.

This part is very straight forward and does not require any further explanation. But for the use of complete newbies here are the easy steps.

Select the account type which suits your needs from the top of this page

There are 3 account types for you to choose from. Hosting, Reseller and Dedicated. I would not bother with a dedicated account at this stage. So feel free to explore the functions of other 2 account types and select the one you like.

Use your existing domain name and click the next button.

Select the billing cycle and enter a coupon code “HOSTGATOR”

Enter your billing information and proceed with the order wizard.

That is it. You will receive an email shortly with all your hosting account details.

Since you have bought the domain name from godaddy and hosting it with hostgator, you have to point your nameservers correctly.

Go to Godaddy’s domain manager and find the name servers section. Replace the existing name servers with the name servers you are getting from hostgator’s account confirmation email.

Allow 24 hours to effect the changes. Now you have a brand new blog site :-)

If you like someone else to do this for you, just contact Hostgator support staff and they will happily do the job for you. I normally get things done from them in less than 90 minutes.

Use our comments section to share your new web site details. I will take a look and guide you further whenever I have a free time.

Where to go from here?

Best of luck to all of you !!! Do not forget us when you become pro-bloggers :-)

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