3 Things You Need for Your WordPress Blog
I Started A Blog on WordPress and it’s Not What I Expected
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and nothing in this post is or is intended to be legal advice. This post is for informational purposes only. Please consult a lawyer for legal advice.
Writing for a living has been an aspiration of mine for a long time. I have love writing since I was a kid but I never thought I could make a living from it. Look anywhere on the internet though and you can find someone doing exactly that, making a great money writing. I have decided to take the plunge and go for it.
While I have written a few articles here on Medium, I have always wanted to have a blog that I could call my own. So, last week I finally started one!
Opening a blog on WordPress, my hosting is through Bluehost, is not what I expected. There are so many things that I never thought about needing when opening my own website and I am going to talk about a little of that here. I have read a million and one blogs about starting a blog and I don’t remember a lot of them talking about this. To be fair, this part is definitely less glamorous and I probably skipped right over it.
Here are some things that I didn’t expect when opening my own blog and hopefully it will help you if this is a step you decide to take.
Plug-ins, Plug-ins, Plug-ins
In hindsight, it makes sense that I would have to add all of these plug-ins to my blog, but it was never something I thought about. Plug-ins for malware, plug-ins for spam, plug-ins for Google Analytics and so many more.
All of these I was able to find for free, luckily, but there are others I didn’t even mention that I have added. These are important additions to your blog that will keep your data and the people that come onto your sight safe.
Once I have all of the ones added that I need, I will write a post about what ones I use.
Legal Pages
You know when you first go onto a website and the privacy policy and you have to accept or decline? Yeah, you need that on your blog too. Privacy Policies are legally required if you are collecting any data from people that come onto your website.
That can include their email so they can join your newsletter, any purchases they make on your blog/website or even having Google Analytics installed on your blog.
There are free generators that you can use to write up privacy policies for you, which is what I intend to do. Having a lawyer go over them as well is definitely recommended.
Two other legal pages you will need are the disclosure and disclaimer page and terms and conditions.
Disclosure and Disclaimer pages are for any affiliate links you have on your blog or for any sponsored posts.
Terms and Conditions is more for if you are selling products off your site and not legally required if you aren’t selling anything.
Navigating WordPress
As someone who has never built a website before, navigating WordPress has been a learning curb. This process has involved a lot of Google searches and YouTube watching and I’m still not done yet.
There are a lot of resources out there to help you if you decide to pursue this route of blogging, but don’t get frustrated if it takes you a little longer to set up everything than you thought it would.
I am telling myself the same thing.
I am excited to start this journey of consistently writing online and I plan on documenting my journey on Medium as a help for me in this process but I also want to help anyone else out there that has considered going this route of blogging.
Thank you for reading!
