Don’t Start That Blog Until… You buy a domain and hook it up to a real site. Here’s how!
… Nah, nevermind. Go ahead and start it now!
This is Part 6 in a series to help you get your blog idea launched. You can find Part 1 here if you’d like to catch up.
I’m a designer. Michelle is a writer. We make a great team for our endeavors as Michelle makes my thoughts clear and concise (this very post went through three revisions). I do the same for her. As she has vision for a way something should look and behave, I’ll help her establish and achieve that idea.
I’m Michelle Peterson’s biggest fan, cheering her on as she’s grown the #staymarried blog from a passion to over 70,000 visitors per month. Her voice on the blog is passionate, inspiring, and honest but you would never get to hear it if she didn’t have a platform to post her words to. Maybe this is where you’re at; you have an idea and maybe you’ve even got a batch of posts edited and ready to publish… but you have NO IDEA how to launch a website. Michelle has already covered quite a few tips and tricks on how to get that blog idea off to a running start. I‘m going to fill in some of the technical gaps.
There are books, articles, college courses, payed programs, and videos covering a plethora of right ways to start a blog/website — so I’m not going to cover every detail in this process. Instead, I’m going to keep it simple, show you the path we took (with as little tech-speak as possible), and move you from nothing to some sort of website that anyone with internet can access.
The steps we’re going to take:
- Choose a platform
- Choose a host
- Buy a domain name
- Connect your domain to your site
- Install WordPress
- Change the appearance
1. Choose a platform
Your ‘platform’ is the tool you’re using to build/manage all the content on your site. I will cover WordPress here because it is the most popular and it is what #staymarried is running on. If you’re interested in other platforms you can take a look at:
There are two ways to use WordPress: one way has simplified functionality and little control over the code, the second way allows you full control and access to all the code. Though you may not need it at the beginning, you’ll be kicking yourself down the line if you don’t have full control. WordPress actually has different sites for these two versions: wordpress.com is limited access and wordpress.org is full access.
COM: is where you can sign up for an account with WordPress and get free hosted space thru them. Going this route would end up giving you a URL something like yoursite.wordpress.com
ORG: is where you can download WordPress as a package and install it anywhere you like. Going this route requires you to have a host and domain and your URL could end up looking like yoursite.com
That info is good to know, but you don’t need to visit either of the .com or .org sites above. Staying focused on the way #staymarried did things, I’m going to assume you want full control over the code and we’ll install WordPress without actually going to their website.
2. Choose a host
This is where your site lives and is accessed by the whole of the internets. In all reality, you can host your own site for free on your own computer at home, but you’d need to keep your computer turned on and connected to the internet at every waking moment… and it’s probably a good idea to have a crap ton of security measures protecting the rest of your computer from every JoeBlow who’s now looking through your folders.
I hope you’re drawing the conclusion that the above scenario is a bad one, and that you should invest in a company that’ll rent you space on their server instead of using your own computer. This ‘renting space on a server’ is called ‘hosting’. I’m using hosting services thru my buddy at belowz.com. Use them or choose from any of these popular site hosing companies:
Maybe you’ve already done a little homework on this subject and you were overwhelmed by the amount of options and level of nerdiness required to decipher those acronyms (VPS, PHP, FTP, SQL, SSI).
Here’s where you’re at… you want to start a blog and your needs are simple. Keep it simple and know that the hosts listed above will be able to handle your traffic and publishing needs just fine. The plan you probably need is going to run you a little less than $10/mo.
Keeping to the method #staymarried followed, I’ll assume you’re choosing a plan with BelowZ or GoDaddy (they share a similar dashboard). Now let’s get that blog name you’ve been brainstorming into a URL.
3. Buy a domain name
Now that you’ve opened an account for server space (step 2), you can use that very same company to purchase your domain name. Your domain name is the unique address of your site (yoursite.com). It’s important that you get a unique domain name as this is the primary way people will get to your site. For the vast majority of users, they’ll simply remember your domain and use it time and time again.
OK, ready to purchase that domain name? At any of those hosting sites you can just search for the name you like. Let’s say your blog is about your experience as a speed dater. You head over to your hosts domain section and do a search for ‘speeddater’… and lo! speeddater.com is already taken. Here are your options…
- Choose .net or .org instead of .com
- Add something to the end of the domain (speeddaterninja.com)
- Go with an ICANN TLD
Ahhhhhh!!! Acronyms!!! Trust me, I know.
The letters that follow the dot in your domain are called the TLD (top-level domain) or gTLD (generic). Here’s a quick list of what a few TLDs are used for:
- COM: Company (for profit)
- NET: Network (internet service providers / ISP)
- ORG: Organization (non-profit)
- EDU, GOV, MIL, US: These have restrictions
- ICANN: Custom TLDs which include .guru, .ninja, .fish, or even .pizza
Though there were originally specific intentions to these TLDs, nowadays the top three are interchangeable. When .com isn’t available, .net is a fine substitute. ICANN is in it’s early days at this point so there is plenty to pick from if you want to branch away from the .com craze. Your host site should show you all available options.
My suggestion is for you to pick option 2… add something to the end of the domain. Instead of ‘excellentwine.com’ go with ‘excellentwineforever.com’. Instead of ‘freeballer.com’ go with ‘freeballerhero.com’. Please stick away from putting hyphens in your domain name.
4. Connect your domain
Once you have a host account and a domain name purchased, it’s time to point your domain to your site. This part can get pretty hairy if you get into the details, but you should be able to complete this in two tasks:
On the host side
- Log in to your host dashboard (or control panel ‘cPanel’)
- Write down your ‘IP Address’ (should be listed right on the dashboard… it looks like four numbers separated by periods)
- Navigate to the ‘Hosted sites’ or ‘Hosted domains’ section
- Add your new domain name to the list
- Point it to the root directory (which is just a slash “/”)
This process sets up your host to watch for users coming to your IP Address from that domain and then points them to the folder that will contain your site.
On the domain side
- Log in to wherever you bought your domain.
- Click on the domain or click “manage” in order to edit it.
- Find the ‘A (Host)’ section and change the ‘Points To’ to your server IP Address that you wrote down earlier.
You’ll see a TTL line item. This is how long the changes take to go live (Time To Live) on your end. The changes being made around the whole internet could take as much as a few days, but you’ll know for sure that it’s working when you type your domain into a browser address bar and it takes you to your new site. Let’s install WordPress.
5. Install WordPress
Alright, you’ve got a host (yay you!) and you’ve got a domain name (yay you!) so now you need to get WordPress onto your server.
We’re going to install WordPress as a web application from your host dashboard. Each host calls it something different, but they’re all the same thing:
BelowZ / GoDaddy: “Applications”
BlueHost: “Site Builders”
DreamHost: “One-click installs”
HostGator: “Quick install”
At all of the above dashboard destinations you’ll find WordPress. From there it’s as simple as clicking ‘Install’ (Note: you are not installing anything onto your personal computer when you do this). There will be a few fields to fill in before the actual install happens:
- A Directory (you’ll be pointing it to your root which, again, is just a slash)
- Admin name and password (you’re making these up)
- Email (an existing email address that can receive details and updates)
- Blog Title
After a few minutes of install you’re ready to log into your new WordPress dashboard. You can log in at yoursite.com/wp-admin. You should receive an email from your host site with this information as well.
6. Change the appearance
This is the fun part. Of course you don’t want your blog to be an exact visual copy of some other blog. This is where picking WordPress as your platform is going to really benefit you. Themes for WordPress vary from default to extremely complex and full-featured.
When you first install WordPress you’re given the current years theme by default - “Twenty Sixteen” is the current theme name. EVERY new WordPress site get’s this theme… if you don’t change it your site will match every other default WordPress site. So, let’s change it…
- Log into your sites WordPress dashboard (http://yoursite.com/wp-admin)
- In the left menu bar, hover on ‘Appearance’ and then click ‘Themes’.
- Click ‘Add new’ theme
- Under ‘Feature filter’ select both ‘fluid’ and ‘responsive’ and any other criteria you think may help narrow the field (Selecting these two filters will show you themes which have been optimized for both desktop and mobile phone screen sizes. YOU WANT THIS!)
- Once you’ve found one you think you like, just click ‘Install’
- Back in the ‘Themes’ menu you can preview and activate this new theme
This is a good way to get started with a free updated look to your new site. Any missing functionality for your site can always be added thru things called Plugins, but we won’t get into that just now.
Want an even better looking site with even more features? Choose a paid theme. One of my favorite places to find these is ThemeForest. You’ll find themes here from $0 up to $70 and they pack a ton of features.
The last way to handle this is to DIY from a blank template or have a web designer custom make you a theme. This last option is the guaranteed way to get exactly what you envision and to rest assured that nobody else out there has the look and style you have. This option is the most in depth and therefore can cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
You now have a blog site
By no means has this been the all-inclusive-full-coverage walk through, but if you’ve been following the steps above you should in fact have a live working website. With hosting and a domain name you’re setup to try and try again with different looks and themes until you get it right, so don’t stress nailing it the first time. Use this new WordPress site as your sandbox until you feel comfortable to share your web address with the rest of the world.
Stay tuned for the next part of this series where Michelle Peterson will share how to utilize social media to get the word out about your new blog.
