WordPress has become popular blogging platform because of ease of use and user friendliness.
Some people may have met troubles in starting a self-hosted WordPress blogs since they have to install, configure and optimize WordPress site by themselves. Below tutorial which includes the guide from picking a proper web host to customize plug-ins and themes. These information could help make things easier.
Step 1: Set Up and Install WordPress
To build a WordPress blog, you should get a hosting account, a domain name and have WordPress installed at first. There are thousands of web hosts supporting WordPress, but we suggest you to go with a company providing free domain and auto WordPress installer to save your money and get you out of the pain on the manual installation, such as BlueHost.
BlueHost (http://www.bluehost.com) founded in 1996, has been named as the best WordPress hosting for personal and small business by WordPress.org since 2006.
Once you have easily opened an account with BlueHost, you can login to the cPanel, scroll down to Site Builders, click on WordPress, and then carefully follow the few steps. There is nothing complicated in the steps, but it is worth noting that in the Step 2 Advanced Options, you should name your site and set a password. A little while after you click on Complete, WordPress is installed. Soon you will receive an email including all of your WordPress site information.
Step 2: Configure the WordPress Blog
Before posting, you should spend few seconds configuring the new blog to make it more pure and secure.
Complete the below steps after logging in to your account.
Add new users to the blog.Default admin user is vulnerable to hacking. You can provide admin privilege after creating a user name.
Add new users if you are looking for new contributors and admins.
Change the Settings of comments. Spam comments are an inevitable problem for blog, but a proper setting can effectively help reduce spammy attacks. Under Settings – Discussion, you can choose whether visitors need to login before leaving a comment, whether to close comments automatically after a certain period of time, or the comments with which words should be marked as spam. It completely depends on you to change the configuration as you like, but we suggest you make sure the visitors have to be registered and logged in for comment.
Step 3: Customize the WordPress Blog
WordPress is completely flexible, so users can customize their blogs in many ways. If you are specialized in this field, you may choose to customize the blog by editing the code manually. In the case that you are a beginner not knowledge in coding, you also have a great number of options since WordPress has an extensive community filled with thousands of free WordPress themes and plug-ins. What you need to do is only to install the one you like on your blog.
Installing WordPress themes and plug-ins is as easy as picking a wallpaper for Windows desktop if you follow the instructions below.
Search the Internet for free WordPress themes/plug-ins you need, then download the files to the desktop.
Login to your blog and expand the menu option of Appearance/Plug-ins. Click on the button that says Add New Theme/Add New.
Click on upload at the top, browse your computer for the theme/plug-in downloaded before and Install Now.
When the installation has been completed, click on Activate.
As known, the WordPress plug-ins are designed to extending the functionality of WordPress to make blogging easier. Here, we have some recommended plug-ins.
WP Super Cache for speeding up the WordPress blog.
Akismet, for checking comments automatically to detect the spam.
All in One SEO Pack for SEO optimization easily
Step 4: Create New Posts and Pages in the WordPress Blog
Writing posts and creating new individual pages are both easy and sharing the similar steps. Now we see how to do them step by step.
- Login to your WordPress blog.
- Expand the menu of Posts/Pages and click on Add New.
- Type the title of your post/page in the small top box, and enter your main content in the large box, then click on Publish to save your new post/page.
- If you want to edit a post/page you have already published, you can select edit under the Posts menu.
- Now the blog is completely under the control because you have learned how to manage every aspect by yourself.
How to Select a Suitable Web Host for WordPress Blog?
To make a successful WordPress blog, the performance of a web host is also important besides the creative content. As our editors reviewed 100+ web hosts, BlueHost is named as the best hosting for blogging.
BlueHost is now serving for over 850,000 WordPress sites and has gained a high reputation based on the excellent WordPress hosting service. The company provides 1 free domain, 1-click WordPress installer, unlimited hosting resources, and guarantees 99.9% uptime & ANYTIME money back. Plus, BlueHost has struck a balance between the high quality service and the cost.
