learn wordpress now – how to blog!

Posts Tagged ‘how to blog’

You’ve got something to say and a message to get across. What’s the quickest, easiest way to get online and find an audience for your pitch? Why, get a blog, of course!

But how do you get started when you know absolutely zilch about blogging?

Here’s the lowdown on how to blog, broken down into six easy steps.

1. Decide what you want your blog to look like. Sketch out on paper what a visitor would see on the screen and think about what the header (if any) will look like and how the user will navigate around. Work out what you are going to say in your blog and how often you will say it. It helps to start a list of the blog posts you’re going to write and when you are going to publish them.
2. Choose your blogging platform. Most blogging software is free but if someone else hosts your blog for free it may come with restrictions. If you want to own the blog and do exactly what you want without anyone imposing any rules you’ll want to go for a WordPress blog on your own domain. (That’s what this blog is!)
3. Chose a domain name. The best sort of domain is one where the words explain exactly what the blog is about. For example, if your blog is going to be about how to breed spiders then a good domain would be spiderbreeding.com (or.net or .info). Don’t make it your own name (joesoap.com) unless you are already a celebrity spider breeder.
4. Get a hosting account. This means signing up with a webhost company that will let you put your blog on their servers.  This costs a few bucks a month.
5. Install the blogging software (WordPress) and choose a design template for your blog that fits in with your ideas in 1. above.
6. Get blogging! Write your introduction or ‘welcome’ page. Write your ‘about’ page. Tell your visitors how to contact you. But primarily, establish a routine and start writing your blog posts: every day, every week, every month.

That, basically is ‘how to blog’. Want to know more? Download one of my tutorials and see these six easy steps fleshed out, step by step.

• How To Build A WordPress.com Blog (free, but with restrictions)
• How To Build A WordPress.org Blog (on your own domain, in your own hosting account)

Just do it!

Creating a blog is now the fastest way to get online. These days, you no longer need to be a tech-wizard or rich enough to employ a webmaster – you just have to be smart enough to create a blog.

So, how to blog?

First, you have to choose a blogging platform.  This is the software mechanism by which your blog is presented to the world. There are quite a few blogging platforms available but there are two clear market leaders: Blogger and WordPress.

Blogger.com is free and is owned and operated by Google.  And that is both its strength and its disadvantage. Yes, you get a free blog and yes, Google is prestigious and powerful. But when you have a Blogger blog Google owns the blog – not you. For that reason most serious bloggers don’t use Blogger as their platform.

Which leaves us with WordPress. WordPress has two platforms: wordpress.com and wordpress.org.

WordPress.com is a bit like blogger.com in that it is free and, because WordPress hosts the blog,  WordPress owns the blog – not you. So, while it is fine for personal bloggers and non-profits, it is not the platform of choice for those who want to attract visitors and particularly for those who want to make money from a blog. WordPress.com doesn’t like you using your blog for commercial purposes

WordPress.org, on the other hand, is still free but you have to pay for web hosting. This means you have to buy a domain and open a hosting account somewhere. And because you pay for that (all of $10-$12 a month!) you own the blog. It’s yours and you can do what you like with it. This is the route that most serious bloggers and most small and large businesses take.  They start with a self-hosted WordPress blog right from the start and they get on with the business of getting a presence online.

Learn how to blog

By now you’ve probably gathered that I’m a big WordPress fan. And I’m here to help you get started with blogging.

I have two tutorials to teach you how to blog:

• How To Build A WordPress.com Blog
• How To Build A WordPress.org Blog

These are downloadable tutorials in ebook format which take you, step by step, through the process of building a WordPress blog. Take your pick – if you can’t decide which one to take, get them both!

If you want to know how to blog, get one of these tutorials now!