Starting Your Own Blog – Part II
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Today I’ll walk you through how to set up a free blog at Wordpress.com. It’s super easy, and since it’s free, you can try it, and if you don’t like it and decide that you’d rather have a blog with your own domain name, you can just take your free blog down and set up a new one using Wordpress.org. I have written more about the pros and cons of each in an earlier post. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me or leave a comment.
So, to set up your free blog, you need to:
1. Go to Wordpress.com and create an account by clicking on Sign up Now.
2. Pick a name and type it in to see if it’s available. If it is, you’re good to go, if not, you’ll have to think of another one. Once you have a unique name, you will be taken to a screen where you see the Title and URL of your blog. You can change the blog title if you want, but not the URL. Set your language and make sure the Privacy box has a check mark in it. Click Signup.
3. You will get an email from Wordpress with a link. Click the link, and you will get to a screen that says “Your account is now active!”. Click on Login on that page and log in with the user name and password you just created in step 2. You will end up on your dashboard. This is the main “control center” of the blog, where you can see stats, comments and more.
4. The left sidebar is your menu of options, and the first thing you want to do is scroll down and click on “Appearance” to select a new theme for your blog. Wordpress sets you up with the Kubrik theme automatically, and it’s not the most attractive. Once you’ve clicked on Appearance, you will end up in a window that shows your current theme up top and all your other choices below. Click on the A-Z option (right under “Browse Themes”) to see all 76 of them.
When you find one you like, click on it, and you will get a preview window of what your blog would look like with that theme. If you like it, click on Activate (in the upper right corner), if you don’t, close it (by clicking the X in the upper left hand corner of the preview window) and try another one. Once you have one you like, activate it. You will see a blank screen once you’ve done this – that’s normal.
5. In the Appearance section on the menu bar, click on Widgets. Widgets are little extras that you can add to the sidebar or footer of your blog. Not all themes have them, but I recommend trying to find one that does – they’re really practical and user friendly.
You can pick and choose any widgets you want of course, but I would suggest adding at least these to your Sidebar: Recent Posts, Categories, Links, Tags (or Tag Cloud), Recent Comments, Archives and Akismet. Akismet is a spam blocker, and makes a huge difference when it comes to the amount of spam comments you get. You add Widgets by just pulling them over to the gray area underneath the Sidebar heading with your mouse. As soon as you drop them in the sidebar, a few options will appear, but just leave each on its default settings for now.
6. Next, click on Comments in the left menu. There will be a comment already, automatically generated by Wordpress, so you want to delete that. Select the comment (put a check mark in the little box next to it), pick Delete from the drop down menu above, and click Apply. You’ll get a warning that you’re about to delete the selected items, just click OK.
7. Click on Pages in the left bar menu. You will see that there is a page already called “About”. Click on it, and you will come to a window where you can edit the text that is already there. Type in (or copy from word if you already typed this up – I recommend doing it that way) the information you want to put here. Once you’re done, click “Update Page” and your changes will be saved. If you want to see what it looks like on the blog, right click on “Visit Site” (right next to your blog name in the upper left hand corner) and select Open Link in New Tab (note: this only works if you use tabbed browsing. The function is different for each browser). Now you’ll have a tab where you can see your updates as you make them (as long as you reload the page after each change).
That’s it. This is what your blog would look like if you picked the “Tarski” theme (and called it Animal Massage Guide).
8. Now you’re ready to start posting. To publish a post, click on Posts in the left hand menu and then on Add New. In the next window, look at the Publish section in the upper right hand area of the page. Click on the Edit link next to “Public” and it will drop down and give you more options. I always like to select Private and work in that mode until I’m ready to publish my post. So select Private and click Save. You will see that the blue button that previously said Publish now says Update Post.
9. Type in (or copy and paste from Word or a text file) your post title in the window just below “Add New Post”. Paste your text in the window below that (with the Visual and HTML tabs). Click on Update Post to save your changes. In the Post Tags section, type in a few keywords that relate to your post (for this post, I might put in blogging, blog, wordpress, setup, account). Below that window, you’ll see a section called Categories with one category in it: Uncategorized. Click on Add New Category and type in an appropriate name. It will show up in the window, select the box next to it and remove it from Uncategorized. Click on Update Post.
If you want to see what it looks like at this point, right click on Visit Site (up top) and select Open Link in New Tab (or if you’re not using tabbed browsing, click on Visit Site and then on the return arrow when you want to go back to your dashboard.
10. If you want to make any changes, go back to your post, make them and remember to click Update Post. Once you’re happy with your post, go to the Publish window again, click on the Edit link next to “Private”, and then on Public. Click OK and you will see that the Update Post button now says Publish again. Click Publish, and your post is up.
In my next few blogging posts, I will do a step-by-step guide to setting up a self hosted blog (where you own your own domain name), teach you how to publish pages and posts, install plugins, and talk about some useful tips and tricks.
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