How To Setup And Start A Blog

There’s five main steps you need to go through in order to set up a blog. If you follow this guide and the five steps, you’ll have your own blog set up in no time.

The Five Steps to Starting a Blog:

Decide what you want to blog about
Choose your preferred blogging platform
Choose whether you want to self-host and a paid domain, or get a free blog
Setting up a blog on your own domain (if you choose self-hosting and a custom domain)
Designing your blog

Decide what you want to blog about

If you’re going to write about something regularly and keep your blog fresh with new information, then you need to write about something that you are really passionate about or that reflects your daily experience. It’s much easier to write articles and posts about topics that you’re passionate about, on the other hand it makes no sense to start a blog about something you have no interest in.

It’s better when you blog about something of interest in a specific field or an industry you ave been a part of for a long time, because you are already an expert. However, if you don’t have any idea which topic or niche you want to write about, think about your hobbies or just start blogging about your daily activities, memorable moments or simply about everything. You can also think about how you want to help people and the valuable information and experience you can share with them via your blog.

Take a look at other blogs on your topic to see what other people are already doing. Ask yourself what you have to offer that is different from what other people are already doing. Identifying your niche will distinguish your blog from your competitors.
Choose your preferred blogging platform

Choosing where you want to build your blog is very important to the success of your blog. I want to assume you’ve heard of WordPress, and this is the platform I advocate. It’s the biggest blogging platforms in the world, with countless plugins and add-ons and almost infinite ways to design and layout your blog. Most of the blogs on the internet are built using the WordPress blogging platform. Approximately 22% of websites around the world use WordPress. That’s over 75 million blogs or websites! WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
Choose whether you want to self-host, or get a free blog

This is one of the biggest decision you’ll have to make wen setting up your blog. You need to decide whether to pay for your blog hosting or grab a free blog from WordPress. getting a free blog may seem attractive for those who aren’t super serious about blogging because of its downsides:

You are not able to get your OWN domain – Instead, you will get a sub-domain. If you decide to start a free blog on wordpress.com (for example), then it would look like this http://oluwafemiadeniyi.wordpress.com

You DON’T OWN your blog – silly as it may sound, you don’t actually own your blog. It’s hosted on someone else’s web property and they can delete it if they want so. They have done so in the past, and keep doing it in the future(Remember Linda Ikeji blog was deleted by Google in 2014 before it was later restored). Which means all your hard work on your blog, all those countless hours of writing blog posts might be vanished within seconds.

A self-hosted blog on your own domain (yourblog.com) is by far the better option. It gives you full control over your blog and you’ll look more professional. It’s also a great choice for people who want to blog long-term, share their knowledge, become a blogger and earn some money from it.


Setting up a blog on your own domain (if you choose self-hosting and a custom domain)

I’m moving forward with the believe you’ve chosen WordPress, and if you haven’t, you should because it’s the best. If you decided to go with a self-hosted blog on your own domain, you have made a smart choice. Finding a great domain name can take a while, but it’s worth it. I suggest you pick something brandable and easy to remember.

WHERE CAN I GET A DOMAIN NAME AND BLOG HOSTING?

I recommend you get a domain and hosting from the same place, that way you’ll save some money and time. In the past few years while I have been creating and managing blogs, I have discovered that there are very few reliable hosting companies.

One of the most reliable one is Siteground hosting

You have two options to install your blog to your own domain:

A) With “One-Click-Installation” using Siteground (You can get a domain from there as well).
B) Manually.

The One-Click-Installation is better for beginners or those who are trying to set up their first blog. If you are internet/computer savvy then have a look at the manual tutorial. Either way, you’ll get your blog online very quickly.
Designing your blog

Design of your blog is very important as the better looking your site is, the more memorable it will be for your visitors. The open-source community behind WordPress has created a large number of themes that are great looking and mobile responsive out of the box. Free themes are a good place to start for any blogger. I recommend that you go into your new WordPress admin, go into “Appearance” on the left-hand side navigation menu and click “Themes”. I usually choose something that looks professional and pretty easy to customise. WordPress also has this awesome feature that allows you to change themes with just a few clicks. So if you start getting tired of your current blog template, you can just switch to another one without losing any precious content or images.

This article was fist published on
http://bluegeek.com.ng/how-to-setup-and-start-a-blog/