Starting a WordPress Blog – Part 1
Tired of using Blogger, WordPress.com, or TypePad and you think you’re ready for the installed version of WordPress (which to me is the big daddy of blogging application)? Then keep reading!
The easiest part of this is proably figuring out what your blog name will be. If you have a business then it’s most likely going to be your business name. If you’re trying to promote your work then you’d want to go with your name. But hold on, with so many websites up nowadays you want to check to make sure that domain name you want is available. So the first thing you want to do is check that. How?
- Go to GoDaddy, check availability and then purchase the one that suits you right there and there
- GoDaddy isn’t the only place to check or purchase (it’s just one we use). To just check you can go to WhoIs.Net. Then you want to find an ICANN accredited domain name reseller.
- Then you want to find a hosting company which THIS can be REALLY tough to do. It’s the heart of your website and so you need to make sure that the company you go through is healthy in many different aspect.
How do you know if a hosting company is reliable and stable?
- First you want to figure out what you want – features wise – out of your hosting provider (e.g. server space, customer service, 800#, Linux/Windows, database, subdomains, control panel, Fantastico, email). If you’re not sure, you need to either read more on this topic or find somebody who can explain it for you. If you know exactly what you want your web space to be then this process will be less painful for you and the person helping.
- A little tip if you want to mainly use your site to run WordPress. Find a hosting company that has Fantastico in their package. With Fantastico you can install and update WordPress with a click of a button. A monkey can even do it {::SMILES}. It’s nice because even though I’m an advanced WP admin having a button to click to upgrade saves me a whole lot of time. NOTE though, if you want to install WordPress MU, the multi-user, you can forget Fantastico. A basic company will do.
- After figuring the features you want to look for companies that has all or more of what you want. Write them out and if possible create a side-by-side chart in Excel or something.
- Go to WebHostingTalk.com. This place is awesome! Type in the name of the hosting company you’ve got listed in the search… the ones you’re interested in… and read what others have to say about it. If you can’t find any post on a company you’re eye-balling, create an account and post a question there. You’ll get some good answers that say day. Keep in mind that there’s no perfect company but from the first few pages of a thread you should be able to get an idea which company is good and which you should just skip.
- Make up your mind and open an account. Here’s my suggestion. DO NOT go for a year plan. Go witha monthly plan and if you like them after a few months you can do the 6-mo or even a year. But anymore I’d be careful. Hosting companies are like roller coasters. They go up and down very quickly. The company that was great 2 years ago might be terrible today. Yes it might be a bit more but imagine your website being down half the time and you can’t get your money back if you switch because despite their bad service you did agree to a contract that said no money back (usually they only have a 30-60 days satisfaction guarantee period).
Ok, so that’s that. Next time we’ll talk about plug-ins. Out of the thousands on WordPress.org’s site which are great to use for an educational blog… or blogs in general.
Posted: October 22nd, 2009 under OpenSource, Tips/Tricks.
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