Setting Up a Simple WordPress Blog
WordPress is possibly the most flexible and most used blogging client on the internet today. Here is a simple guide to getting your WordPress blog up and running. Remember that there are many resources online that are a search engine away if you need further assistance.
Plan out how you want your site to be organized. What pages will you have on it? A contact page? An “About” page? Make sure you know what categories you will be using to organize your posts as well.
First, invest a few dollars into your own domain. If you put up a free WordPress blog, your blog will be located at http://yourwebsitename.wordpress.com, which is less powerful for SEO results, less memorable, and less brand-able. Domains are very inexpensive, so purchase one and buy a hosting package for it.
Your web hosting provider will likely have a “one-click install” option for WordPress. If not, do a search for “Wordpress manual install” and find directions, or contact your web hosting provider for further assistance. They may be able to install it on their end. But most major web hosting providers offer you the option to install WordPress with just a few clicks.
Once WordPress is installed, you need to set it up and add in all the details. Under the “Administration” section, start going through each page. Flesh out your profile and your details. Under the “General” page, you will want to add a tagline for your site and other general site information. The “Writing” and “Reading” sections will help you customize how your readers navigate and read your content, and how you will be creating it. The “Discussion” page then gives you the option on handling comments, and whether or not you want them at all.
Under “Posts”, you can organize your categories and manage all your posts. Click “Add New” to start adding blog posts. The “Pages” section is similar, but it adds static pages in addition to your blog, not blog posts. This would be where you create and add your contact page, “About” page, etc.
Finally, once you have a few pages created and posts written and published, go to “Appearance” and play around with different themes for your site. You can also search for and install other ones. If you search for “free WordPress themes” in a search engine (like Google), you can find even more that you may like. It’s important to have some content and pages created first so that you can see how your content will be viewed in the theme.
Plugins are extensions to your WordPress installation that can offer additional functionality. They install in the same manner as themes do, and you can search all over the internet for useful plugins.
There are many ways to extend your WordPress installation and make it even more useful and fancy, but if you are looking to just get started with WordPress and run a simple blog, this guide will get you there.
I’d love to see some information about how to do all the backend stuff like installing WordPress on a company website!
We’ll see what we can do, HallDeidre!