So, you want to create a WordPress blog. Congratulations! WordPress is a great solution on how to start a blog, plus we think blogs are great!
Better yet, it’s also surprisingly simple to start a free blog. That’s why we say you can do it in less than 15 minutes.
But it’s that simple to get started with a WordPress blog, knowing what you need to do and how you can do it is still important. so you don’t waste time on your way to becoming a successful blogger. That’s why we made this step-by-step guide.
We’ll walk you through each of the steps you need to take to start a blog using self-hosted WordPress. And we’ll do it with tons of screenshots and instructions for beginners. Start a blog today!
How to Start a Blog: What You’ll Need
If you want to start a blog, here is the whole process step by step:
- Sign up for web hosting (we recommend Bluehost).
- Choose a domain name for your blog.
- Install the free WordPress blogging software.
- Log in and write your first blog post.
- Change up your blog design by choosing a theme.
- Install a couple of essential plugins.
- Add Google Analytics.
- Don’t forget about marketing.
We’ll cover each of these steps in detail below, but for now, what you should know is that none of these steps require deep technical knowledge. Yes, you really can figure out how to set up a blog on your own!
Once you have your free WordPress blog up and running, you’ll probably want to start writing and modifying its look/functionality. (for example, completely changing your header or revamping your home page). To help you do that, we’ll also show you how to:
- Write your first blog post using the WordPress editor
- Change the look and feel of your free WordPress blog using a “theme”
- Add functionality to your blog using tools called “plugins”
As long as you know how to use social networking sites, like Facebook or Tumblr, and have a general confidence when it comes to “web stuff”, you can follow this guide. We promise!
Step 1: Buy hosting and your domain name
Have you decided on your blogging niche yet? Great, so making your free WordPress blog accessible to people around the world or ready for search engine optimization requires two things:
- ✅ Hosting: This is the engine that drives your site. While you don’t “see” it, every website on the internet has a hosting provider that powers it.
- ✅ Domain: This is the permanent address of your blog. For example, ours is themeisle.com. Check out this post if you need help finding a good name and figuring out how custom domains work.
You can buy your blog hosting and domain at the same time, so don’t. worrying too much about the nitty-gritty right now. But before you can do that, you need to choose a WordPress host. Due to the popularity of WordPress, there are a large number of WordPress hosts.
We have personally tested many hosting companies for performance and reliability. With the results of all these experiments in mind, we can recommend Bluehost to bloggers new to the WordPress world.
Here’s why:
- It’s affordable. You can host your site for the price of a small latte each month – it’s only $2.75 per month for the first 12 months.
- Get a free domain name when you sign up. This relates to affordability – otherwise your own domain would cost $10.
- You can easily install WordPress. With just a few clicks, you can launch the WordPress software and have a blog. No technical knowledge needed!
- It has enough performance to get you started. When you’re just starting out, Bluehost offers plenty of performance to keep your site loading.
In total, it will cost you about $33 to host your blog on Bluehost for the whole year, which includes your free domain name. It also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
That’s as cheap as it gets if you want to start a WordPress blog.
How to Sign Up for WordPress Hosting at Bluehost
Getting Started , click here to go to Bluehost and unlock their special offer for Themeisle users ($2.75/mo). Then click the “Start Now” button. You’ll get access to Bluehost’s plans.
For beginners, we recommend the cheap Basic plan because it has a lot of power for your fledgling blog. Click the SELECT button to start the process:
On the next screen, enter the domain name you want to use for your blog in the new domain and click Next. Your blog name should truly reflect the scope of your interest and be fairly straightforward. If you’re unsure, Bluehost has an FAQ dedicated to the topic. Remember – you get this for free:
One click and you’ll get to the final screen, where you need to enter the basic account and billing details at the top:
As you scroll down, you will see a Package Information section > at the bottom Here, you can choose how many years of alo jamement to buy, as well as the complements that you want. While Bluehost will check some of these plugins by default, you can safely deselect them:
In total, you should pay around ~$35 for your domain name and a year of a plan accommodation.
Once you have completed all the information, click SUBMIT at the bottom to complete your purchase.
Very good! Now you can install everything you need for your new blogging platform.
Step 2: Install the free WordPress software
If you want to create a WordPress blog, you must, of course, Wait, you need to install the WordPress software.
We know this may sound a bit intimidating, but we think you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to install WordPress.
When you completed the signup process in the previous step, you should have received an email from Bluehost with details on how to sign in to Bluehost’s Customer Area.
Go ahead and sign in to Bluehost.
As soon as you log in for the first time, Bluehost will provide you with a simple wizard that will guide you through the process of installing WordPress on your new site.
Don’t see the login wizard? setting? Don’t worry, it’s still very easy to install WordPress with Bluehost. Simply go to the My Sites area and click the Create Site button to launch the wizard:
You will then be able to fill in all the important details for your site name and username/password that you will use to manage your WordPress blog:
Once the installation process is complete, you can access the control panel of your new blog by going to yourdomain.com/wp-admin.
Step 3: Go ahead and write your first blog post – you earned it!
Now that you’ve learned how to create a WordPress blog, you’re probably excited to start blogging!
We’ll show you how to change the look and feel of your blog in a second. But first, let’s review how easy it is to start blogging on your new website.
When you first log in to your blog’s WordPress control panel, you should see a screen like this:
To write a blog post:
- Hover over Posts
- Click Add New
This will open the WordPress Editor, which allows you to write your blog posts using a really intuitive block system.
To add text, just click and type. For other content, such as an embedded image or YouTube video, you can add new “blocks.” To help you use the editor, you can follow our detailed guide here or our higher level guide here.
Step 4: Here’s how to change the look and feel of your blog
When you create a WordPress blog, one of the main benefits you get is access a WordPress Huge collection of themes and plugins. Here’s a quick overview of the two:
We’ll cover the former in this section.
As soon as you create a WordPress blog, you already have an active theme. This is either the default WordPress theme or the theme you chose during the Bluehost Setup Wizard.
But there are actually thousands of blog themes available for WordPress sites (many (most of them are open source like WordPress itself), so you’re by no means limited to that small selection that Bluehost initially shows you.
Where to find WordPress themes for your blog
When you go to choose a WordPress theme, you will need to choose between free and premium themes.There is no inherent difference between the two, but premium themes tend to have more detailed designs and features.
To find free themes, the best place to look is the official theme of WordPress.org directory.
To find premium themes, you’ll need a broader approach. Some good options are:
If you want to skip the search, we also put together a list of the best and most popular free WordPress themes.
How to install a WordPress theme
Once you’ve found a theme you love, WordPress makes it easy to add that theme to your site.
Here’s how:
- Roll over on Appearance
- Select Themes
- Click the Add New
button
- If you chose a free theme on WordPress.org, search for the theme by name and click Install.
- If you purchased a premium theme, click the Upload Theme button and upload the ZIP file you should have received when you purchased the theme.
After installing your theme, be sure to click the Activate button to activate it on your site.
How to Further Customize Your WordPress Theme
You can treat your theme as a kind of template and customize it further using the WordPress Customizer (which is something like a builder). of websites). This interface allows you to make certain adjustments to your theme to improve your web design, without the need to know code or HTML.
You can access it by going to Appearance → Customize:
Depending on the theme you choose, you may have a different set of options in the left sidebar. But in general, you can:
- Make changes using the options on the left
- See a real-time preview in the website preview on the right
- Make your changes live by clicking Savecom/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/how-to-create-a-wordpress-blog-9.png” alt=”Manage WordPress Plugins” />
Step 6: Adding Google Analytics to WordPress
As you build a WordPress blog, you should also keep the concept of growth in mind – after all, what’s the point of writing publicly on the internet if no one is going to read what you post? write? ?
Developing an audience is important, but it’s hard to grow if you don’t understand how your blog visitors interact with your pages and posts.
The idea is:
How can you improve something when you don’t even know what needs to be improved in the first place?
That’s where Google Analytics comes in.
Benefits of Google Analytics for WordPress
Adding Google Analytics to your new blog has a host of benefits.
For example, it will allow you to track your blog’s growth (or lack thereof) over the course of time. Although it is important Be patient, if your blog is stuck for more than a year, and assuming you post regularly, using Google Analytics might help you re-evaluate your strategy.
As you gain more experience in blogging, Managing your blog, you can set up sales funnels to try to sell an ebook or promote an affiliate product. Google Analytics can help you by identifying the leaks in your funnel. In more direct terms, it shows you which pages your site visitors are exiting from.
For example, say you have a four-page funnel, and Google Analytics tells you that the exit rate on the third page of that funnel is astronomically high. By having that information, you will be able to take a closer look at the page and make adjustments. If you “plug the leak,” more potential buyers will make it to the last page and hopefully buy whatever it is you’re offering. Without Google Analytics, you would never be able to identify the leak in such a scenario.
This is just one example, but the underlying benefit of Google Analytics is that it shows you how visitors to your site are interacting. with that. You can then take action on that information to improve the performance of your WordPress blog.
Google Analytics Tutorials for WordPress
Most of the tutorials you’ll find on the web on how to Adding Google Analytics to your WordPress blog approaches this in two ways:
- Manually inserting the code for Google Analytics yourself.
- Using a WordPress plugin to install Google Analytics for you.
👉 We have tutorials that explain both options.
Video version of this tutorial
Here is a video tutorial of the steps needed to build a blog on WordPress. You can think of it as a summary of most of the steps we covered above.
What to do after creating a WordPress blog
Okay, you’ve made it to a WordPress blog, install your own theme and add some functionality with plugins.
Well, the world is your oyster! But if you’re like most people, you’ll probably want to look for ways to:
- Get more visitors to your blog
- Make money from your blog (monetization how-to )
And if you’re a beginner, you might be interested in the 45 Things Our Team of Bloggers Want to Know Before Starting a Good Blog. You can read all of these blogging tips here.
You’ll probably also want to create a blog content strategy and find out how to come up with new blog post ideas. If you’re not interested in running a personal blog sharing random thoughts, populating your site with high-quality blog topics and doing keyword research is one of the most important tasks of a full-time professional blogger.
Once your site allows you to make money from blogging, you can even create your own newsletter and get into email marketing, build email lists or start forums to further engage your audience. A great blog is also a perfect complement to selling products (even when done through e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon or eBay).
At this stage, you’re already equipped with everything you need, so get out there, work hard on some fresh content, and turn your new WordPress site into a successful blog.
* This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and then you buy the product, we will receive a small fee. Don’t worry though, you’ll still pay the standard amount, so there’s no additional cost on your part.
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