Getting started with your own Blog

Incrediblogger; learn to become an incredible blogger. I was wondering about this tagline the other day. We provide info on SEO, marketing, social media, blogging; however we have never yet given out any info to aspirant bloggers. We provide tips and tricks to people who are already there in this line of work. But we have not yet given any thought to the people who want to start with their own blogs, but lack the technical know-how. I believe that we should live up to the essence of our tagline, and so, here goes an article giving you a detailed process of how to start your own blog, and become an incredible blogger.

1)      Choose your niche:-

First and foremost thing before starting up a blog is to think about it. No kidding! Before you even begin, you should know what is it that you want your blog to be about, a.k.a, your niche.

It can be anything starting from breakfast menus to movie reviews, just anything. But please do make sure that whatever you choose your niche to be, it should be a topic that either you are knowledgeable in or have interest in. That way you have a lesser tendency to run out of content, and will be able to reach out to your readers more proactively.

2)      Choose  a domain name:-

This thing is going to be fun. Simply put, choose a name for your blog, like something we did, incrediblogger. However try to make your domain name catchy and reflect your niche. This might not be easy. As it might happen that whatever name you come up with, may already be in use. So, as they say, Choose Well!

3)      Choose your web-host:-

Now here comes the tricky part, choosing a host. Believe me; going for free hosting is not worth it. Since those free-hosting companies will also have huge number of different blogs associated with it. You will not have any control over it and neither will you be able to move your reader base if you choose to move your blog to a different host in future. The best way is to pay for the hosting. Now you might have different constraints, from technical know-how of a proper hosting to your limited budget. And choosing by searching will be like shooting in the dark. You might miss out a better opportunity from a host if you choose wrong. We were initially hosted at Bluehost and were having some issues with them. So we decided to move out and believe me finding the right host to suit our need as well as our budget was a real pain in the ass. Thankfully we came across a web hosting review site which helped me compare the Cheap Web Hosting providers and I will definitely like to share the link to help you guys. Always remember that buying hosting is a big step and moving across hosts is a real challenge. Consider to read quality but Cheap Web Hosting packages before you buy your own server space. The user reviews there helped us immensely and we finally decided to go with Hostgator and till date we are pretty happy with their service and technical support.

They provide an extensive, categorized, and undoubtedly cheap hosting plans, which begins from as low as $3 a month.

4)      Install WordPress: the Blogging Service:-

You might stop right here to ask, why WordPress? Well all I can say is it is the best user-friendly free blogging software that I have come across. Its CMS (Content Management System), in my opinion gives immense flexibility and possibility. So as newcomer, this is the best software to strengthen your foothold.

Now the installation process can be broken down to a few steps. Don’t give up now! We are nearly there.

a)      Make sure that your host supports MySQL and PHP. Cause that is what you will be using.

b)      Create a database. It can be done from your hosting control panel of your webhost. Alternatively you may also ask for help from your hosting provider. In this context, I would like to add that many of you might be using Linux or Windows based operating system to host your business. Personally I am not much proficient with Linux based ones and Prasenjit is the guy who administers this blog and he does it pretty well. However as per your requirement if you require a windows based hosting (preferably if you want to host ASP.NET based intranet and internet deployments), there are several windows web hosting providers out there that provides world class hosting and a support that gives a step by step instructions to guide you along.

Now after your database is set-up. You should have your Database Name, Database User Name, Database Password and your Host name(can be localhost or any other name of your choosing) with you.

c)       Now go to WordPress home site and download the latest version of the software. Uncompress the file.

d)      Once uncompressed, open your WordPress folder and open the file named wp-config-sample.php. Find out the piece of code where your database info is set. It should be something like

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘wordpress’);

define(‘DB_USER’, ‘username’);

define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password’);

define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’);

Now change these values to provide your actual database name, username, password and host name.

Once done, save the file, close it and rename it to wp-config.php

e)      Now you may choose to keep everything in the root directory of your site, in which case you will need to upload all your files and folders from your wordpress folder to your web site root folder, and remove or rename any index.php or index.html file before you upload.

However, if you need a separate directory for your website, then you need to rename your wordpress folder to the sub-directory name and upload that folder to your root directory.

f)       Open a browser, go to your domain and append /wp-admin/install.php at the end of it. You will be taken through simple, step by step instructions to complete the installation process. You will also be provided with a username and password, which you need to keep safe for future needs and requirements.

And that’s it!!! You are now the master of a blog. Log in and start Blogging!!!