Creating a blog can be a tedious task. There are sites available that help you get started quicker, but they may not have the best setup for long term creation. A blog can be used for many different reasons. One of the reasons is so people can post their ideas online. Look at how many recipe blogs there are out there and how often we find ourselves on them to find the perfect chocolate chip muffin recipe (guilty as charged).
In this post, I hope to lay out some guidelines on starting your first blog or blog post. I will lay out the things I did when I started my blog and some of the things I learned along the way.
What is it about?
The most important aspect of creating a blog post, is the topic. You need to figure out what you want to write about on a daily basis. What should your site be about? What hobbies do you enjoy? There are lots of topics to choose from in the world, it has to be something you can write about on end.
It’s ok to start with a broad topic like health. At a certain point however, you may want to narrow you topic down, at least in the beginning while you’re trying to gain an audience. Once you have a hold of what you like in that category, you can expand on one subject or two, if you’re good!
Domain Name
If you have a name that you want for your blog, its best to check and make sure that its not already taken. If you use Siteground, then you can check to see if it available for use and then purchase it with the hosting package you want. Hosting is explained more below.
Here is a photo in the Marketplace of Siteground where you can get a domain name with any different extention if available.
Dot COM is usually the most popular, but in today’s world where almost everyone has a website, it’s getting harder to find specific names you may want. Dot NET would probably be next. After you’ve done this step, now it’s time to choose a host for your site!
Hosting
The next important part of blog creation is finding a host for your blog. Have you already bought a domain name? If not that’s ok. There are many places that sale domains and have a hosting service in one place. I wrote a post about my choice, Siteground – that you can read and learn a bit about.
Some other web hosts that are popluar and you can look into are:
Domain.com
Namecheap
Hostinger
HostGator
Of course, there is always going to be many more, but after years of researching and trying different ones, I found the best for me. Make sure there is a money back guarantee, because after a certain amount of days, you may find you may not like the service or you find there is too much down time.
For example, Siteground offers a 30 day money back guarantee for shared hosting and 14 day money back guarantee for cloud hosting. From my experience the down time has been minimal. They let me know when my sites will be affected and for how long! Which is a couple of reasons I stayed with them.
One of the other ways to create a blog, especially is you’re on a budget, is through Systeme.io. The best thing about Systeme is you can start for free! You don’t have to do just blogs either. They offer you a chance to get started with your affiliate marketing, email marketing, making courses, sale products, etc. Its actually a pretty great site for a newbie! You don’t even need a domain name to start, you can have one, but the free account doesn’t let you use it without their name in the address.
WordPress
Once you’ve chosen your domain name and host, you now need to configure the blog. Each of the hosts I have listed above may have their own way to get blogs started, but if you want to use WordPress, it should be pretty straight forward to begin. On Siteground, after you’ve purchased your hosting package, you will want to install WordPress on your new site. WordPress is one of the most popular ways to create a blog.
Before we continue, its best to talk about WordPress a bit more. Through your findings, you may have seen two WordPress sites. WordPress.com and WordPress.org. They both serve important purposes, but they differ in use. A simple explanation is that the .COM website allows you to get started with a blog quick and easy. They host it, you can customize with a few themes, and you can pay a small monthly fee for your own blog. Plugins and themes are very limited, so I wouldn’t look to get crazy with it.
As for WordPress.org, it is usually hosted by another company. In some case you download the WordPress package to your pc then upload to any hosting site that you’re using. That’s why I used Siteground. Like I mentioned above, once I created an account and figured out my plan, I downloaded wordpress directly onto the server for use. From there, you can create blogs, websites, e-commerce sites, etc.
First Blog Post
Once you’ve done all the steps above and decided who you want to host your blog, you’re now ready to get you’re theme and create. Usually, when we create a blog or blog post, we have in mind what it will be about. Finding a theme to fit your style or personality could be one of the hardest parts of creating the blog. So many themes, so little time!
Using Siteground and WordPress, creating a post is very easy. You should find yourself on your home screen and on the left hand side, you will see Posts.
As you can see, creating a post is simple. From there, it will take you to a page to start writing.
Here is the WordPress block editor. As you can see, you can post your title where it says. Underneath, you can start a new paragraph. If you don’t want a paragraph yet, and you want to place a photo, you can do so by clicking the “+” button on the right and add an element. If you press the plus button located at the top left, you will open a menu of options to add to the page. WordPress has a full tutorial for what each one does and how to use it.
Conclusion
That’s how you can start your first blog. Once you get the hang of it, creativeness will just come to you. And I know this whole process can seem overwhelming, but taking your time and learning different steps along the way will help out. There are thousands of themes and plugins to use in the WordPress world. You will learn how to utilize them to best of your knowledge and make one of the best blogs on the web!
Good luck on your blog journey!