How to Start a WordPress Blog in 2024 (8 Easy Steps)

Artturi Jalli

16 min readJun 5, 2024

Let me show you how to create a blog from start to finish—step by step.

After reading this guide, you know how to:

Get a .com domain name.
Install a blog.
Customize your blog.
Write a blog post.
Get visitors to your blog.

And more.

This is a beginner-friendly guide. You don’t need any technical skills! Just repeat every step exactly the way I do.

Ready? Let’s start!

Disclaimer: This post has affiliate links at no cost to you. I may earn a small commission if you use the services I recommend in this pot.

#1 Getting a Web Host

First, head over to Cloudways.com.

Then sign up. Use the code “ARTTURI” to save 25% of your web hosting costs.

This becomes handy soon when we upgrade to a paid web hosting plan.

Once you’ve signed up, you should receive an email like this that confirms your sign-up.

At this point, CloudWays might ask for your identity. If they do so, please make sure to follow their instructions.

Next up, choose the application that you’ll use to build your blog.

The most popular (and best) option is WordPress. (Over 43% of all the websites are powered by WordPress.)

So make sure to choose WordPress:

Then enter the name details for your application. By the way, this is not the public name of your blog. Nobody else will see these names.

For example, you can enter details like:

Application name: My First Blog
Server name: My First Blog Server
Project name: First Blog Project

Just use names that you can remember later if you launch multiple blogs.

(We will choose the “real” name for your blog later.)

Next up, choose the hosting plan.

If you’re a beginner blogger with no audience, I’d go with a DigitalOcean server and a 1GB server size.

(You can scale up your server later once you hit a bigger number of people and more content on your site.)

Then choose your server location.

Choose a location that’s close to your audience to minimize loading times. If you have a global audience, select New York or London as your location.

Then click “Launch Now.”

At this point, you need to enter your credit card details. Don’t forget to use the coupon code “ARTTURI” to get 25% off.

Once you’ve paid for the plan, it will take about 5–10 minutes for Cloudways to launch your site hosting.

Once the wait is complete, you will see your app in your Cloudways dashboard.

For example, here’s my example “TravelBlogServer” which stores my soon-to-be WordPress blog:

And here’s the WordPress installation for the blog:

If you see this, it means that now you have successfully created a blog.

You can visit it by opening up your application:

Then click a link that looks something like this:

Now you should see a website like this:

This is the default first version of your website.

If your site looks different than above, don’t worry. The above is the default look for 2024 which will change early 2025.

Now we could start editing this website to turn it into a blog. But before we do that, let’s fix one thing.

As you can see, the name of your website isn’t quite what you want.

Before we make edits to this site, we should change the URL of your site to describe your blog better, right?

Let me show you how to do that next.

#2 Getting a Domain Name

As the next step, you need a domain for your blog. This is the URL address where your blog will live.

Now your URL is something ugly like wordpress-1243513–45621312.cloudwaysapps.com.

But what you want instead might be something sleek like alicesblog.com.

Luckily, domains are very easy to get (and very cheap too.)

Start by heading over to NameCheap. Then choose the .COM option.

Then registry your .com domain. For example, I created artturisblog.com:

If your domain name isn’t available (like most popular domains), feel free to use a tool like DomainWheel to generate suggestions.

Once you find an available domain, add it to your cart.

You don’t need any of the extra services that it offers.

Click “Checkout.”

Then confirm your order.

(You sometimes get a discount code from the homepage, so remember to use it too.)

Then fill in your details.

And then click “Pay Now” to buy your domain.

This will take a minute or two to process.

Once the loading completes, you’ve become the owner of a domain. Congrats!

But now if you visit your domain’s URL, you won’t find anything behind it.

This is because now your domain is just an empty address without a website.

But as you may recall, we already created a website earlier in Cloudways. Now we just need to connect it with your NameCheap domain.

#3 Connecting the Blog and the Domain

Now, let’s connect your blog’s new domain to Cloudways.

First, open up your CloudWays dashboard (click here) and choose your website project:

Then scroll down until you see your Public IP.

Copy this address to your clipboard. You’ll need it in a second.

Then click here to access your NameCheap dashboard and click “Manage” on your domain’s name.

Then click on “Advanced DNS:”

Then click “Add New Record”

Choose “A Record” from the dropdown:

Then:

Type @ as your host.
Paste the IP address (you copied from CloudWays.)
Hit “Save Changes.”

Here’s a screenshot that shows exactly how to do it:

Next up, head over to your Cloudways server dashboard.

Then click on the web icon and your project’s name as follows:

Then choose “Domain Management.”

Then click on “Add Domain.” This moves your Cloudways blog to the domain you purchased earlier.

Enter the domain name you purchased from NameCheap earlier and click “Add Domain.”

Then click on the three dots on the new domain that appears and choose “Make Primary.”

Verify this action by choosing “Set as Primary” again:

This will take about 1–3 minutes to process.

Once the processing completes, you’re redirected back to your applications page:

Then, here’s where you might need to wait.

I only had to wait for 5 minutes. However, some users have reported that it might take up to 24 hours for the domain to move from NameCheap to Cloudways.

You can use this service to check the progress of your transfer. Enter your domain name in the search box and hit “Search.”

Once you see no red crosses in this view (and in the map,) your domain has successfully been moved to Cloudways.

Now you can visit your site.

However, once you do this, you might see a warning like this:

If this happens, just click “Advanced” and “Proceed to the site.”

Then you should see a page like this:

Awesome, that’s your brand new blog with your custom domain name. Now anyone in the world can visit this blog.

Before I show you how to customize the site, you need to get rid of that security issue, though.

To do this, you need to certify your website. This sounds technical but is very easy to do.

#4 Certifying Your Blog

To make your site secure, it needs to use HTTPS instead of HTTP.

To change this, head over to the server dashboard on Cloudways.

Then choose your blog server, click the web icon, and click on your blog from the Applications:

Then click on the SSL Certificate tab.

Choose Let’s Encrypt from the dropdown and specify your email address and your blog’s domain.

Then wait for a while.

#5 Visiting Your Blog

Congratulations! Now you have successfully launched a blog.

You can visit your blog’s URL by entering your domain into the URL bar.

Epic! That’s a publicly accessible URL that anyone can visit now.

#6 Logging in as Admin

Now it’s time to start customizing your website.

To do this, you need access to your blog’s admin view.

To get there, open up the Cloudways server page again and choose your blog from the applications:

Then choose “Access Details” from the left-hand menu.

This shows you the admin login page for your blog:

Usually, the admin view of your website is accessible from **yourblogsurl.com/wp-admin/**

Click it and you will see a page like this:

This is the page you’ll visit every day when running your blog. This is where you can customize your site and write blog posts.

By the way, you can find your admin credentials below the Admin Panel:

Copy-paste these into the WordPress login view and click “Log In.”

This opens up your blog’s admin view:

(From now on, you’ll rarely need your NameCheap or Cloudways pages anymore.)

Awesome!

Now that you have a blog and a URL, let’s start to customize it.

#7 Customizing Your Blog

Now, let’s modify your blog because now it’s a default template website that looks something generic like this:

The theme is good, but the images, text, and buttons are not accurate. This is what you need to change before you can start writing blog posts.

Customizing the Theme

To start customizing your blog, click on “Edit site.” This only works assuming you’ve signed in to your WordPress admin (as shown earlier.)

As the first step, let’s remove the unnecessary elements from the homepage.

To do this:

Hover your mouse over the elements on your blog
Click one of the elements you don’t like.
Hover over again and click “Delete”.

You can do this for all the elements but leave the blog posts section intact. This is where all your blog posts will automatically go. And because it’s a blog, it makes sense to show the latest blog posts on the homepage.

This is what your blog’s homepage looks like now:

Tip: Don’t worry about the design yet. Start writing blog posts as quickly as possible because those are what makes your blog stand out. Once your site makes say $3,000/month it’s time to re-think the design (if necessary.)

Adding Necessary Pages

Next up, let’s add the necessary pages (About, Contact) to your site.

To add a new page, click “New” > “Page” on the top bar.

Give the page a title “About.” Then tell something about your blog to keep people interested.

Once your page is ready, hit “Publish”.

Now visit your site.

The “About” page is sitting at the navigation menu automatically now.

Next, create another page with the title “Contact.” Add your email here for the readers to contact you.

By the way, adding a contact page is a must. You won’t find blogs ranked on Google and get traffic without contact pages.

Then, let’s remove the annoying Sample Page from the menu.

Open your WordPress dashboard from the top left, then click on “Pages” and “Trash” on the “Sample page”.

If you revisit your blog, you can see that the Sample Page is gone.

Next up, let’s change your site’s name to something else. This can for example be your domain name.

To make this change:

Visit your site.
Click on “Edit site.”
Hover over “Just another WordPress site” or whatever it says on the top.
Change the text by typing your blog’s name.

For example, if the blog’s domain name is aitechwiz1.com, you can use it here.

By the way, you can drag and drop a logo next to the tagline too.

Then stretch the corners to make it as big or small as you like. I usually keep it small but something one can still clearly see.

Now your blog should look something like this:

It has a logo and a name. It has the contact and about pages. It has the latest blog posts.

Simple but effective!

Once you write blog posts, those will stack up neatly on the front page.

We’re almost there!

Fixing the Author and Category

Before you can start writing blog posts, there are a couple of fixes we still need to do.

First, you want to make sure that the sample blog post author and category look good. For me it shows something completely random like this:

To change the post category:

Open your WordPress dashboard, and click on “Posts” > “Categories”.
Hover over the “Uncategorized” and click on “Quick Edit”.

Change the category name and slug to something more descriptive.

For example, I want to talk about AI on my blog so I will call my default category “AI:”

Update the category and you’re done.

Now the default post is in the “AI” category instead of “Uncategorized”:

Then, let’s change the author’s name as well.

If you see your name there already, you’re all set. But if you see something random like yourblog_ecjhgsf12, you definitely want to get rid of that.

To do this:

Open your WordPress dashboard.
Click on “Users” > “All users.”
Hover over the Administrator username.

Then change both the “Nickname” and “Display name publicly” sections:

Then click “Update Profile.” Otherwise, the changes won’t take effect.

Now revisit your blog’s homepage. This time, the blog post category and author should look nice!

Editing the Footer

Next up, let’s edit the bottom of your blog (called footer.)

Let’s first add the useful “About” and “Contact” pages there.

To do this:

Click on “Edit site” on the top bar (like you’ve done before.)

Drag your mouse over the footer and click on it.

Hover over the About section like this:

Now click on the “+” icon and search for “Page list”.

Click the “Page List” and you’ll see the “About” and “Contact” pages added to the footer like this:

After this, remove the rest of the elements in the footer. (Take your cursor over the elements and click on “Delete”.)

Now your blog looks like this:

That’s very basic but effective.

Also, once you start publishing blogs, those will stack up nicely on the front page.

Changing the URL Structure

Next up, let’s make a neat configuration to make your pages’ URLs shorter.

Do this only if you haven’t published any blog posts yet.

As a blogger, you want your URLs to be as short and understandable as possible.

To do this:

Go to your WordPress admin view settings
Click “Permalinks”.
Choose the “Post name” option. This makes your URLs as short as possible:

Important: If you already have published blog posts, this action changes all their URLs. This means that all links and references to that post will stop working (unless you redirect.)

Remove Comments?

I always keep comments off on my blogs.

Although it’s not good for the community, it’s the better option because 99% of the comments are bots.

To remove comments:

Open your “Hello world” blog post on the front page.
Click “Edit site.”
Scroll to the bottom of the page and remove the comments section.

And now your blog’s first version is ready.

Before you come back and start messing with your design, logo, branding, and whatnot, make sure that you have a lot of readers.

#8 Writing a Blog Post

Now it’s time to start writing blog posts.

But this is where it can all go wrong.

Do not just write random posts about random topics. Instead, choose on-demand topics and provide true value by writing the best posts on the internet.

Not sure how?

I have some awesome news! I have made a free 100+ minute course on how to write a blog post that gets reads.

Tip: Use WWW. Access Point

Oh, and one more thing!

If you paid close attention, you might have noticed that you can’t access your blog with www. in front of the domain name.

That’s not a mistake. These days it’s common for new domains to skip the www. part because it’s not needed anywhere. I recommend not using www. because it’s an old practice.

But if you still want to have it, let me show you how to add it.

First, head over to your NameCheap dashboard, choose your domain, and select Advanced DNS (like you did before.)