1. Setup blog title and tagline

(In Settings - General)

• You don’t want your blog to be branded as “just another WordPress weblog”
• Write your blog title and explain why your blog is unique in the blog tagline

2. Change permalinks

(In Settings - Permalinks)

• You don’t want your blog articles to be called something like:

http://www.yourdomain.com/?p=123

• You want to make your URL’s unique, keyword-rich, SEO and user friendly
• On HowToMakeMyBlog.com I use the custom option field like this:

/%category%/%postname%/

• By doing this my blog permalinks look like this:

http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/category/postname/

3. Change the admin nickname

(In Users - Your Profile)

• You don’t want “Admin” to be the name of the author of the blog posts you write
• Change admin nickname to your own name and have it displayed alongside each post

4. Clean up

• Delete Hello World! generic post (In Posts)
• Delete the generic About page (In Pages)
• Delete generic blogroll (In Links)
• Delete Hello Dolly plugin (In Plugins)

5. Activate comment spam filter

(In Plugins)

• Akismet is the best comment spam filter and it comes with your WordPress
• You just need to get the free WordPress API key to be able to activate it

6. Make it visible to search engines

(In Settings - Privacy)

• Make sure your blog is visible to everyone, including search engines

7. Get own blog theme

(In Appearance - Themes)

• You don’t want WordPress Default to be your blog theme
• Read why I use Thesis Theme on my blog
• Find the theme you like and download it
• Upload the theme onto your server (/wp-content/themes/)
• Activate

These were the adjustments I always do on my WordPress blogs before I start working with plugins. I would recommend you to spend some time and browse the WordPress platform, get familiar with it and adjust some settings that you find relevant.

Get domain name and hosting

• First step is to buy your domain name and hosting.
• At GoDaddy domain name is $1.99 when buying it with hosting
• Hosting plan I use is economy ($4.74 a month when buying a year)

Setup your hosting account

• Login to your GoDaddy account
• Click on Hosting and chose My Hosting Account
• Find your hosting plan and click on Setup Account
• Select the checkbox and click Next
• Chose username and password you would like to use for your FTP hosting access and click Next
• Chose Select a domain from this account and find your domain name
• Finish the setup by clicking Submit

Get your FTP Account Information

• When your hosting has been setup you will get an email titled “Hosting Account Setup” from GoDaddy
• Find your “FTP Account Information” in the email

Hosting/FTP User Name: your username
Web Site URL: your domain URL
FTP Site URL: your FTP URL
Your Web Site Visitor Statistics: Your stats URL

Create MySQL database

• Login to your GoDaddy account
• Click on Hosting and chose My Hosting Account
• Find your domain name and click on Manage Account
• In the upper menu click on Databases and chose MySQL
• Click on Create Database
• Write description, chose username and password
• Click OK and wait until GoDaddy sets your MySQL

When the MySQL has been setup, click on the pencil to “Edit/view details” and save the following details:

MySQL Database Information
Status: Setup
Host Name: your host name
Database Name: database name you have chosen
Database Version: 4.1
Description: description you have chosen
User Name: username you have chosen

Download WordPress

• Go to WordPress.org and download the latest version
• WordPress comes in a .zip file so unzip it
• Now you have a WordPress folder
• Find the wp-config-sample.php file and rename it to wp-config.php

Open wp-config.php in text editor (like NotePad++) and find this part:

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define(’DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere‘);
/** MySQL database username */
define(’DB_USER’, ‘usernamehere‘);
/** MySQL database password */
define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘yourpasswordhere‘);
/** MySQL hostname */
define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost‘);

Take your MySQL Database Information you have from GoDaddy and insert them in places where I have marked with bold:

• Your MySQL Database Name should replace putyourdbnamehere
• Your MySQL User Name should replace usernamehere
• Your MySQL password should replace yourpasswordhere
• Your MySQL Host Name should replace localhost

Now find following in your wp-config.php:

define(’AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(’SECURE_AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(’LOGGED_IN_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(’NONCE_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);

Visit WordPress secret key and copy details you get there and insert them instead of the above.

• Save wp-config.php

Login to your web hosting

• Get a FTP client (like FileZilla)
• Open FTP client and login to your hosting account using your FTP account information
• Place all the files from your WordPress folder onto your server
• In this example I will place all files in root directory (http://www.yourdomain.com). The directory will look something like this when the WordPress files are uploaded:

• Run WordPress installation by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php

This is what you will see when you enter the address:

• Fill in your Blog Title
• Fill in Your E-mail
• Make sure your Allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati is checked
• Click on Install WordPress
• Next screen you see should say Success! and should give you your Username and Password.
• Click on Log In.
• Now you will see your blog’s Log In page. Make sure to bookmark that URL.
• Fill in the Username and Password you have just received
• Click on Log In.

Now you will see your WordPress Dashboard where all the optimization, customization, post writing, plugin installing, comment moderating takes place.

This means your blog has been setup and is live online. Check your http://www.domainname.com to see it. You will also get an email titled New WordPress Blog which includes your URL and your username / password.

1. Download and unzip the WordPress package, if you haven’t already.
2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
3. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php in the WordPress folder.
4. Open wp-config.php in your text editor and fill in your database details.
5. Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server
6. Run the WordPress installation script from: http://yourwebsite.com/wp-admin/install.php

That’s it! WordPress should now be installed and you are ready to start blogging.

If you have any problems with the installation, please check here for the detailed instructions from WordPress.

WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on hundreds of thousands of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

On WordPress website you can download and install a software script called WordPress. To do this you need a web host and a little time. WordPress is completely customizable and can be used for almost anything. All the details on how to install word press are here.

There are also others, like:

• b2evolution
• Drupal
• Livejournal
• LifeType
• Movable Type

I recommend GoDaddy.com. These days it is fairly cheap to register a domain name and to have a web hosting. You will need less than $10 US Dollars to register your blog domain name for a full year.

GoDaddy have several blog hosting options but to start off I would recommend just the Economy Plan option. You get 10 GB of web space which is more than enough for any blog. Web hosting is a bit more expensive, but buying a full year of blog hosting would be around $5 monthly.

1. Consider the blog topic

It is normally best to have a primary theme of the blog and to be consistent in writing about the chosen theme throughout your blog site. So the question to ask is what can you write about? What topics are you interested in and have knowledge about? If you are very knowledgeable on the subject you chose to write about on your blog, it will be much easier for you to create interesting content that people would like to read and learn from.

2. Is there an audience for your blog topic?

Consider the interest of your potential blog visitors and readers. With blogging you can be heard and you can share your views with the wider community. When you know the blog topic that you are interested in writing about, you must consider if there are people that would like to read about it. In order to reach an audience, the topic of your blog should be something that will interest some people. So take that into consideration.

3. Blog name

Now you have the topic of the blog and you know that there is a potential audience that would like to read, learn and interact about the blog topic that you chose. Now you must consider how to entitle your blog. This is important as you will need a title for your blog and you will need to register a blog domain name. Domain name choice is monumental as that is how your blog will be found.

It is a recommended practice that your domain name will be the same as the name of your blog. Also it is recommended for the domain name to be short and memorable. It should be something easy to remember. The domain name should use targeted keywords about your blog content and should use keyword that your potential blog visitors would search for in a search engine.

To get some inspiration for the domain name, use the following domain name suggestion tool. Just type in different keyword concepts about your topic and the tool will give you different domain name suggestions and possibilities.

This whole process makes it fairly easy for people to create new blog pages. This is especially useful for first time users, as they can start blogging right away. It is a very quick process, as it doesn’t require much planing and designing. There is a wealth of tools and information on blogging online. As long as you have a domain name and a website hosting, installing free blogging software is an easy and quick process.

There are many resources online which would provide you with a large number of design templates to use on your blog. In just one click you get your whole blog redesigned, compared to a lot of work that is needed to redesign a HTML website.

Another positive thing about creating a blog is interactivity. Blogs are made to be interactive. Your blog visitors can easily contact you and comment on your blog articles, and you can just as easily comment back. And with the size of the Internet, whatever your blog topic is, whatever you like to write your blog about, there will always be an audience wanting to visit and listen to what you have to say.

Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what’s new first. Then they can comment on it or link to it or email you.

Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.

Here,  we will try to make it as simple as possible for you to learn how to setup a blog, how to start writing blog-posts, how to promote your blog and get traffic to your blog and how to monetize your blog to start earning money from it.

Just because of this game a lot of stores in USA and UK has opened at the midnight. First impressions are good