Aaron Donohoe

I’ve been asked on many occassions about running a Wordpress blog on your own domain, and on all of those occassions I’ve stated that it’s easier than it appears! I have since decided to write a series of step-by-step guides from the get go regarding setting yourself up on your own domain with Wordpress.

Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting the author’s daily life and thoughts.

Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.

Firstly you must decide what you want your blog to be about; a personal blog, online business blog, development blog, technology blog, money making blog. There’s a variety of categories you can base your blog about, more importantly, make your blog about something you have a personal interest in yourself! You won’t be motivated if you know nothing about your chosen category.

Next you need to chose a name, and more equally important, a domain name to which your blog will be available. Try to use keywords that relate to your blog category, or if it’s a personal blog, use your name or internet alias. For example, if you’re opening a technology blog, I would suggest that you have technology related keywords in your domain and blog name.

Next you should register your domain, to secure it for the long-term, if you don’t intend on starting your blog immediatly. I’d advise that you use reputable domain registrars, such as GoDaddy, Name, or Register365. All offer reasonable prices, with second to none support available when needed, and have an easy to use domain management panel.

Now with your domain registered, you should secure hosting. Obviously this is upto your requirements, fundementally your host should offer a generousl package of space and bandwidth, as well as MySQL databases and will support PHP which is a must! Wordpress has setout a list of recommended Wordpress hosts - here.

Now that you’ve secured your hosting and domain, you can now move onto installing Wordpress! If you’re lucky enough to have Fantastico, and Wordpress pre-installed you can cut out the next few steps. But if you haven’t, or would like to manually install Wordpress, read on!

Download Wordpress here. Unzip using WinRar or a simular program. Open the folder, read the readme.html file! Next open wp-config-sample.php in Wordpad, Dreamweaver or another simular program. Replace the database information with the correspoding information for your hosting and MySQL database. See below.

Remeber to leave the quotation marks in place!

‘putdbnamehere’ - Your database name, often it is structured like: user_blog.

‘usernamehere’ - Put your cPanel or MySQL Database username here.

‘yourpasswordhere’ - Replace with your password.

‘localhost’ - Generally you don’t have to replace this, but in some instances you may be required to replace it with the MySql server address of your host, which they will supply.

Now save as wp-config.php, and upload all the files and folders to your server root. Login to your hosting FTP account using an FTP Client like SmartFTP, usually your server root is located at public_html.

Once all the files have been uploaded successfully, point your browser to http://yourdomain.com/blog folder/wp-admin/install.php, and run the installer script. This will now input the tables into your MySQL database. If you encounter an error double check wp-config.php, if this measure fails contact Wordpress Support for more help.

If your install was successful, you will be forwarded to a splash page, where you will be given your username and temporary password, you will then proceed to the Wordpress login page, where you should use these details to login to the admin control panel. I would advise, that at this point you go to users, and modify the password to something unique to you!

You can now start blogging! But before you do, make sure that you setup your blog’s categories, options and of course blogroll! You can now begin blogging, as time progresses you should become more familiar (if you’re not already) with the Wordpress interface. It’s argueably one of the easiest to use blogging systems, with a large followings of Themes, Plugins, Widgets, and other modifications which we’ll go into greater detail in futher installments.

Part 2 is due in the next few days!

Tags: a, blog, Blogging, install, installation, making, Money, running, traffic, tutorial, wordpress

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 8:11 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.