Setting up a word press blog may sound more difficult than it actually is but it is pretty straight forward and can be done in a few easy steps. To start off with you need to purchase a domain from one of the domain registrars and then have it hosted at a web hosting service and one that I recommend is Host Gator as it needs to have ‘C Panel’ and ‘Fantastico Deluxe’. If you already have a domain name that you want to use you can have it hosted at Host Gator you will just need to change the Domain Name Servers, this is easy to do and instructions are included in the welcome e-mail from Host Gator.
Once you have set up your hosting account you will need to log in to your ‘Host Gator C Panel’ and scroll down to the software services section usually the second one from the bottom of the page, In here you will need to click on the Fantastico Deluxe smiley face icon that will let you install word press on your domain name. On the navigation pane on the left hand side in the section ‘blogs’ you will find a link that says word press, click this link and a box with word press will show, inside this box click ‘new installation’ and the box will change and will require you to fill out a few fields of information and select your domain name from the drop down list if you have two or more domain names, if you have only one then this is all that will show, be sure that you select the correct domain name for your blog.
In the ‘install in directory’ leave blank if you want your domain name to be your blog, if you want it in a different folder or directory insert the name of it here i.e. if you want your blog to be on http://yourdomainname.com/blog then fill this field with the word ‘blog’ if not then leave it blank. Then fill in the admin access data, this is going to be your user name and pass for the admin area of the blog so be sure to make a note of these, in the base configuration you need to fill your name or a nickname as this will show on your blog as the name of the person that posted that blog so if you put ‘Fred’ in the field then ‘Fred’ will show as posted by ‘Fred’. In the ‘admin e-mail field’ insert a valid e-mail as this will be used by word press to notify you of any comments that need moderating etc. In the site name you can put the title of your blog and in the description what your blog is about and this becomes a tag line.
When you have done all this you are ready to click the button at the bottom that says ‘Install Word Press’ and you will be taken to step two and asked to verify everything, if you are happy with this click on finish installation to install your blog, step three will tell you where your blog was installed and will tell you to bookmark a special URL, this is the URL to the admin area so be sure to do this as this where you will log in to the admin section of your blog. Now if you type in to your address bar of your browser you will see your newly installed blog. Now that you have your blog there are a few more things that you need to do and these will be covered in blogging part two.
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