So you have decided to learn how to make a blog – good for you! Blogging can be a wonderful, rewarding experience and could even develop into a part or full time income. There are numerous ways you can get started blogging, many of them discussed throughout this site, but this ‘how to’ will specifically detail how to make a blog that is self hosted. If you would like to see a side by side comparison of the different types of blog set ups in order to decide which is best for you, be sure to see our blogging platform comparison chart.
Creating a self hosted blog is by far the best way to truly build a blogging business. This form of blogging gives you the most freedom of creativity, functionality and monetization methods. If your long term goals include making money with blogs, or the possibility of creating blogs to sell, setting up your blog correctly from the start is the most crucial step.
Why Create A Self Hosted WordPress Blog?
Self hosting your own WordPress blog gives you unlimited options. Unlike WordPress.com hosted blogs, you are able to choose from a wide variety of themes and plugins. Free blogs hosted directly at wordpress.com also do not allow you to add any forms of monetization to your blog. For those of you looking to make money blogging, this restriction clearly is not going to work for you.
If you are wanting to brand your name or idea, free blogs do hinder this a little. While it is possible to create a portion of the name you want, it will also be added to the ‘wordpress.com’ or ‘blogger.com’ domain name, as what is called a sub-domain. For example, if you would like your blog to be called ‘Kathy’s Kitchen Tips’, here is potentially how your blog address will look:
kathyskitchentips.wordpress.com or kathyskitchentips.blogger.com
However, with a self hosted blog, you may be able to register your own domain name, with the exact name you would like and direct friends, family and/or potential customers to:
kathyskitchentips.com
Looks and sounds much more professional, don’t you think?
More Limitations
While free blogs hosted at both wordpress.com and blogger.com do have a variety of themes and plugins available for use, you are quite limited in the overall functionality you can create. Learning how to make a blog that gives you 100% unlimited freedom does take a few dollars to get started, but the potential financial return, as well as pride in your blog being set up exactly as you wish, will easily make up for this small start up expense.
How To Make A Blog – Self Hosted
We have scoured the internet in order to find the best prices for those of you wanting to learn how to make a blog with as little expense as possible. By following the steps below, you can have your blog up and running within 30 minutes for less than $8. So, let’s get started!
- Register a domain name for your blog. This helps brand your name and/or niche better than using free hosted domains. We recommend GoDaddy, as they currently have .com’s available for just $7.49 and .info’s for just $1.99! (clicking the link will open GoDaddy in a new window so you can keep track of the steps involved.)
- Using your new domain name, open a hosting account for your blog. One of the best hosting services available for a reasonable cost is HostGator. They give you unlimited usage for your blog and have a great customer support division if you ever need help. They also use cPanel which is perfect for setting up your word press blog quickly. Click here to set up your HostGator hosting account for only 1 CENT! (clicking the link will open HostGator in a new window so you can keep track of the steps involved.)
- Within a few minutes of opening your hosting account, you will receive a welcome email from Hostgator. This email will tell you what the nameservers are for your domain name. These nameservers are important and tell the world wide web where everyone can find you!. They will look something like:
ns1234.nameserver.com and ns1235.nameserver.com
Once you find them, log into your Godaddy account, select Nameservers from your domain menu, select Custom Nameservers and enter in the two names Hostgator provided, making sure to enter both into the first 2 locations provided.
- Now you need to wait about 30 minutes for these nameservers to kick in, otherwise known as propagate. When they have fully propagated, you will then be able to log into your cPanel account. These login details were also in your HostGator welcome email.
- Once you have logged into cPanel, don’t be overwhelmed. The next steps are super easy. At the bottom of the list of icons you find either Fantastico or Fantastico DeLuxe. Click this to see the list of scripts that can be auto-installed to your website. Find Blogs, then WordPress on the list and click, followed by clicking on New Installation, as shown below.
- This will bring you to an installation page that will, within 2 clicks of your mouse, install wordpress on your new domain name. Enter your new blog details as shown below:
- Finally, click install and you now have your own self hosted wordpress blog ready for all the information you want to add to it.
As you can see, learning how to make a blog is not difficult at all. Be sure to browse around the site for tips on choosing the best wordpress theme for your new blog, as well as helpful wordpress plugins to give your new blog some amazing features.
