For many people, blogging is a fun hobby where they can share their creative thoughts with an audience. For others, it is a source of income. Whatever purpose one person might have for blogging, they still need to choose a blogging platform. If blogging is not a business for you, then using a free platform like Blogger is probably the approach you will want to take. However, for those who use their blogging more professionally, owning the domain name and self-hosting the blog is the way to go using WordPress. There are a few points that people seem to most often get confused about when looking at using WordPress. First, remember, it’s wordpress.org, NOT wordpress.com.Second, yes, WordPress is free- however, domain names and hosting costs are not. So what do these terms mean?
Domain Name
A domain name is like the title of a book. There are many chapters, maybe images, various content, but it has a single title. For example, this blog’s domain name is business2blogger.com. You can pick various extensions- that is, .net, .info, .biz, etc. The most common is a .com, mostly because it is what people tend to type in when they are looking for a site.
Hosting
Hosting is can be considered the storage unit of sorts for your files. You need a place for your domain to pull all of the information from when people are visiting your site. There are various options for hosting plans, and most will cost you from $5-$10 per month. Some of the more popular hosts include http://bluehost.com, http://dreamhost.com, and http://hostgator.com. There are plenty more and you can choose what host you use based on your needs. One thing to consider when choosing a host is how much bandwidth you will need for your site- often, a standard hosting plan is more than sufficient for a blogger just starting out, but as sites grow, more space may be needed.
WordPress
Many hosting companies offer easy WordPress installations (a great consideration when choosing a hosting company- find out if they offer this). If not, WordPress has their Famous 5-Minute Installation right on their site. The step-by-step instructions require a little bit of work but is relatively painless. Once you install WordPress itself, you are almost there!
Theme
One of the most common questions people have is what theme they should use for WordPress; do they need a paid one, which is better, etc. etc. The answer is that you can really do what you want to do- it depends on how much effort and time you want to put into it. Paid themes like Thesis and Headway stand out because they have excellent SEO (search engine optimization) built right into their platforms. However, plugins can help this with free themes. One of my favorite free themes is Atahualpa- it is extremely customizable with an easy-to-understand user interface. Headway is fast becoming my new favorite paid theme, because it not only has excellent SEO options and amazing customization capabilities, but it also has a drag-and-drop interface that even the least tech-savvy can use to make their own customizations. These are important things to know about a theme before making the investment- while you can always hire someone to take care of the back-end for you, there will be things along the way that you will want to change and customize too.
At this point, you have the basic tools to start a WordPress Blog.
About Ashley
My client wants his website transformed into a blog. The domain is already with GoDaddy as is hosting. Therefore, would you recommend that I use Go Daddy’s install of wordpress? Secondly, if I want to use Atahualpa for a theme, will that be possible? Or, will Go Daddy offer themes? The segway of transferring seems a bit daunting. I appreciate your advise. Thanks!