Setting up a blog in today’s world is a lot easier than it once was. Many people believe that it is a technical process and you would need a professional to do it. Well I’m here to tell you that it’s neither technical or difficult.

If you follow along with this WordPress How To setup guide, by the end, you will have a fully functioning WordPress blog – taking action is the key with any how to guide.

The first thing I would like to explain is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org as there is often some confusion. WordPress.com is a hosted blog service in which you do not have to download or install anything and has some restrictions – you cannot upload themes or plugins and you are not allowed to run any form of ads. WordPress.org is an open-source web-based application which you are free to do with as you please, which makes it highly powerful and is very user friendly. This is what I will be showing you in this article.

1. There are a few thing that you will need to do before you can start install WordPress, you will need to have a hosting service and a domain name setup first. I am currently using BlueHost.com, but there are many alternatives. Speak to friends and family to see if they can recommend a service to you. Depending on the type of blog you are setting up will depend on your domain name, but using your name for a personal blog would be a good choice, or the name of your company if it’s for business. Now that you have your hosting service and your domain name all setup we can now start with the installation of WordPress.

2. Now that you have your hosting all setup, login to your domains Cpanel with the user name and password they provided you with. Now scroll down and you will see a panel called ‘Software/Service’ and within this panel you will see an icon called ‘Simple Scripts’ click on it.

3. You will now arrive at the ‘Simple Script’ page with a list of web based applications which you can install. Look down the page and you will see a title for ‘Blogs’, under that title you will find WordPress, click the link to start the install process.

4. You will now arrive at the install page. Once there, read through the page and click the ‘Install now’ button. You will now be at the ‘Step 1: Installation Preferences’. You will first need to select the version of WordPress you are going to install, always choose the the latest version but not a beta version. You will then need to select the domain name you would like to install your WordPress blog onto. The default domain will be the domain name you chose when you first signed up with your hosting service, if you have more than one like I do you can choose from the drop down menu which domain name you wish to install onto. You also have the option to install your WordPress blog onto a directory, for example as I have done you can have www.yourdomainname.com/blog. If you just want yourdomainname.com just leave the box blank. Next under ‘Step 2: Advanced Options’ in the box provided enter a name for your site for example I entered ‘WordPress How To‘ and then tick the box underneath to ‘Automatically create a new database’. Final read the ‘Legal Information’ in ‘Step 3’ tick the box to agree and click the ‘Complete’ button.

5. Now Simple Script will install your WordPress blog onto your server and once done it will display your site URL, your login URL and finally your Username and Password. Your WordPress blog is now installed and visible, to view your newly installed blog just click on the site URL. You probably won’t think much of the look of your site at the moment but this can all be changed and you can have a lot of fun doing it, and again none of this is technical – it can all be done very easily and as I just said it’s also good fun.

Thank you for taking the time to read and I hope you enjoy using WordPress

Alester Fox:-)
WordPress How To

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