It continues from How To Create A Blog (Part III). How To Create A Blog (Part IV)
Now you definitely have everything you need to create your blog, so let’s get to work.
In this section we will see the case of WordPress.com. If you had chosen WordPress.org, skip this step and go straight to the next step: step 6.
Creating a free blog on WordPress.com is a really simple process. (Details later in this post)
If you want to use WordPress.org you will also need a hosting server for your blog.
I recommend two options: SiteGround and Raiola Networks.
We are really talking about premium hosting at very affordable prices. Its main strengths are the quality of its servers (make the site faster), a technical support for WordPress and a backup service every 4 hours.
Raiola Networks is also a very good option. Their servers have been somewhat slower in our tests, but it is also something cheaper. In addition, it offers no support for WordPress integrated into the normal hosting plans, but as an extra service.
If you want to rush the price to the maximum, but without giving up a hosting with a reasonable quality and support, Hostgator has been one of the few options for very cheap hosting with a decent service I have worked with.
If you prefer to contrast other options, make sure you have enough knowledge. The hosting provider is critical to your project and there are plenty of poor quality offers in the market.
Having bought the hosting, you are now ready to create a professional blog with WordPress.org. Which is something more complex because in this case is no longer a simple cloud service in which to open a user account. You have to download the WordPress application (which is free) and install it yourself on the server of your hosting.
But don’t panic, creating a blog with WordPress.org is also easy. (Details later in this post)
If there’s one crucial thing about WordPress configuration that I want to emphasize. Make sure you use permalinks that are “nice” URLs, that is, composed of words. That’s why I’ve differentiated this section from the general configuration below.
In WordPress.com there will be no problem. In this version of WordPress the permanent links are already configured as default option and can not be changed. But, in WordPress.org, for reasons that frankly I can not understand, the default option at this time remain the URLs parameterized.
That is, if you don’t change this option, your contents would have URLs like the following one:
“https://www.yourpage.com/?p=25213”
This type of URLs that comes by default you have to change it yes or yes. Because they have two serious problems:
So my recommendation is very simple: in the “Settings -> Permanent links” menu of the WordPress administration panel, change the default option from “Default” to “Input name”.
The configuration process would be identical in WordPress.com, except for the permanent links that in this version of WordPress are already pre-configured as permanent links.
And as part of the overall configuration process, don’t forget to create a gravatar. You can create it here in a trivial way and it will associate a photo to one or several email addresses that you indicate in the registration.
Thanks to this, in the comments of your own blog and when you comment on others, an image of yourself will appear and not an ugly generic avatar as you have already seen in the comment sections of the blogs.
I highly recommend it for the benefit it brings to your image as a blogger.
The ease of radically changing the design of WordPress through a mechanism “plug & play” very simple as they are the themes is one of the key factors that have made this platform the success it is today. With a change of theme you will immediately change the look of your blog.
But this also has its dark side. There are so many themes (thousands), so many free. It’s so easy to install them and it’s so entertaining to play with them.
Many people spend tens and tens of hours messing around without doing anything concrete, without really focusing on choosing the theme that best serves them to start with their blog. Just leaving aside also their most important task in their blog: creating content.
On the other hand, each theme is a world. There are very simple WordPress themes (most of them free) with hardly any possibilities of customization beyond changing the logo and background color, and others in which you can configure practically to the last detail of everything.
In addition, there is no common user interface, except for the basic options, i.e. each theme of the complexes requires a new learning process.
Another fundamental tip: don’t rush to buy the first theme that has entered through your eyes.
I get a lot of questions from frustrated people because nothing else to do with a hosting have also been done with a theme of payment and in the end they find that the theme does not allow them to make the adjustments they need in an easy way.
As you can see, the issue of themes is not trivial, so here is my advice: be very pragmatic in this, try to choose at the beginning as much as possible a theme that suits your needs, but do not be shrewd. The moment you have a reasonably good option, stay with it.
At first you won’t have a mature idea to be able to choose the perfect theme, that will be after a few months, a year or something else, when your blog has been minimally consolidated.
That’s when it might really be worth investing a little more effort in the selection of your theme and investing money in a theme.
At that time, the most advisable will be a powerful, flexible and highly configurable payment theme such as Divi, which can be considered at this time possibly the best theme for end users (non-technical) market.
However, as I said, each theme is a world, each with a different handling. Therefore, there is no universal way to teach the handling of any subject.
You will have to learn how to handle the specific theme you choose by following the manufacturer’s instructions or specific tutorials you find on the net for that specific theme.
Continue reading at: How To Create A Blog (Part V)
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Good post. I learn something new and challenging on sites I stumbleupon every day.
It will always be interesting to read through content from other writers and practice
something from other sites.