Bloggers need to be dedicated and have the desire to create great content. A powerful blogging platform is the key to success. There are hundreds of blogging platforms, including Tumblr, WordPress and Blogger. But none can compare to the WordPress content management system (CMS). You can create beautiful articles and publish videos. It also has the ability to produce any type of content that you want. This guide will show you how to create a WordPress blog and turn it into a destination for people.
This tutorial will show you how to set up a WordPress blog. It also includes details about hosting, creating a new post, and tips for improving your marketing and search engine optimization. We recommend that you first think about the niche you want to write about on your blog. Without a strong focus, it can be difficult to get into the blogging community.
Keep reading to find out how to create a WordPress blog.
What are the requirements to start a WordPress blog?
Although every blog is different, there are some basic elements that can be used to create a professional-looking blog.
These pieces will help you build a foundation for your blog.
- Use a web host to store your website files on a server. For smaller blogs, shared servers are great but you might need more powerful hosting if your blog is going to grow.
- Your domain name or the URL address of your blog. This is how people will find you online. An example of a domain name is ecommerce-platforms.com. Sometimes, your host will give you a domain name for free.
- This is the most recent version WordPress. It’s the content management system that we use to design blogs and create blog posts.
- WordPress theme for blogging. Although themes come in a variety of prices (many are available for free), they are essential to designing and making your site look great. You don’t need to be a web designer expert to use a theme.
The primary elements are the most important. All other items can be added later. We’ll discuss additional tools that can increase your chances of being found online, such as SEO WordPress plugins or contact forms.
Continue reading to find out how to create a WordPress blog.
Choose your Hosting and Domain Name
First, give your WordPress blog a name and find a storage location to keep its files. Name your blog. This is the first step. You will need to choose a name and verify that a domain name is available.
A domain name can be acquired in conjunction with selecting a hosting provider. Most reputable hosting companies offer the ability to purchase domain names when you sign up for hosting.
It’s better to do both tasks in one go. SiteGround is our preferred choice for bloggers who are just starting out. WP Engine and SiteGround offer excellent hosting services. SiteGround is affordable, secure, and allows you to upgrade as your blog grows.
You need a hosting company that can scale up your business. Although you may not need to increase your server resources to handle thousands of visitors, it is nice to know that you do have the option. SiteGround is a good choice for blogs of all sizes, whether small or large. The pricing is flexible, and you have the option to choose from many hosting options.
This homepage lists the most popular hosting plans. They range from shared web hosting to cloud hosting.
The Web Hosting and WordPress Hosting plans are the best for blogs, especially those that do not plan to scale quickly. The WordPress Hosting plan is our favorite, as it provides a managed hosting environment where WordPress and the essential plugins can be installed automatically without you having to do any work.
We recommend that you compare each plan to find the one that best suits your needs.
There are several pricing options available for each type of hosting plan. These plans are based on how many websites you support, webspace and the monthly visits to your site.
You can choose the one that suits you best. We recommend the GrowBig or StartUp plans. There’s no need to spend more money if you don’t use it. If you require more traffic support, you can always upgrade to a better plan.
SiteGround will take you to a page where you can register a new domain or transfer an existing one.
SiteGround will guide you through it all.
In this example, we will select that we wish to register a domain. In the box below, type in your domain name. To verify that the domain is still available, click on the Proceed button.
The next page will tell you if the domain name is available. If the domain is not available, you can type in another variation or choose one of the suggestions (this will usually take the same name, but add a different extension like.org or even.biz).
Once you have found a domain name to purchase, go through the Review and Complete page and fill in your Email and Password fields. These will allow you to log into your hosting dashboard. Continue to provide additional contact information, such as your name and address.
Scroll down and enter your payment information.
Continue reading below the payment information to see how much you are paying and what options you have for changing your deal. SiteGround offers a dropdown option to modify your hosting period, as with many hosting companies. A longer contract period usually means a lower monthly fee, which can help you save money on your first year as well as the future.
You can also choose to have additional tools and services such as domain registration, domain privacy and site scanning.
Click on the Pay Now button and your account will be activated. Next, you will need to activate and install WordPress on the hosting server. SiteGround or any other host stores and manages your blog files on a server. This allows it to be viewed online.
Start your WordPress blog on the Host
Many reliable web hosts provide one-click WordPress installation buttons. SiteGround is no exception. It offers a quick WordPress button by going to WordPress > Install & Manage.
If you intend to sell products through your blog, then select WordPress.
SiteGround will guide you through the rest of the process. This includes specifying your domain and choosing your login information to WordPress. Finally, ensure that the installation is completed. You’ll either see a login form to access the WordPress wp admin dashboard, or be sent directly to the WordPress dashboard.
Log in to your WordPress dashboard with the username and password that you created during WordPress installation. This is not the same login information you used to create your hosting account.
You now have an active WordPress website stored on the SiteGround servers, or any other hosting company. We’ll show you how to make your website look beautiful with a WordPress theme for blogging.
Buy a WordPress Blogging Theme
WordPress is minimalistic by nature. It serves primarily as a foundation for you to create on. Most WordPress installations include a default WordPress theme, so that your site looks at the very least presentable. Technically, you can post blog articles and manage your menu.
You should do some research before you choose the right WordPress theme for you blog. This will allow you to control the look of your blog and give you the option to choose colors, fonts and formats, rather than settling on the default theme.
There are many ways to search for WordPress themes. Premium themes are those that offer direct customer support and advanced features. You can find them at places like MojoMarketplace and ThemeForest. To find hundreds of reputable developers such as Elegant Themes and ThemeIsle, you can also search online for premium theme vendors.
WordPress, on the other hand provides a link to the WordPress Theme Library.
Go to Appearance > WordPress Dashboard Themes.
You can see that the Twenty Twenty theme has been installed on your site. This theme is the easiest to use, but you can also search for additional functionality with WordPress themes.
To browse all the free WordPress themes, click on the Add New button.
Filter the library to see only the most popular, newest, and featured themes.
You can also click on the Feature filter to narrow down your search to themes with specific features such as blogs or ecommerce.Astra and Hello Elementor are two of the most popular blogging themes. They’re lightweight and can be used to design multiple types of websites. They also offer demo content and additional templates to help you design your website.
You can install as many themes as you like and remove as many as you don’t. It takes just a few minutes to activate and test a new theme. You can also use it to test your blog’s functionality.
In this example, we will install the Hello Elementor template. Demo content and a page builder are required for many WordPress themes. This allows you to add templates to your pages. Demo content and page building options can vary from one theme to the next.
To access the Hello Elementor page templates, you will need to install the Elementor Page Builder.
After activation, you can go to Pages > Add new in WordPress.
You can create a homepage, blog post feed or any other page you wish, including Contact pages or About information.
To activate the page builder, click the Edit with Elementor button and begin your design using page templates.
On the next page, you will see the Elementor page-builder.
Click the File Folder icon to access all page templates or blocks.
You will need a premium subscription to access many Elementor templates, but you can still browse the collection to find free ones.To find specific designs, you can search for keywords (e.g. “blog”) We found a blog-oriented template which is free to use in this instance.
Each theme is different in how it installs templates and demo content. You might find your theme uses a different method.
Hello Elementor requires you to connect to the Template Library in cloud.
It will then allow you to click on the Insert button to view the template on your site.The page builder shows the entire design. It offers drag-and drop elements as well as the option to click on the content blocks and edit the demo data or add your own content.
We recommend that you also look into the default WordPress themes, which often include new WordPress releases.
These are named after a year or a musician. You can view the most recent at the top of the WordPress theme library search.
You can see that there are Twenty Twenty, Twenty Nineteen and Twenty Twenty-One available during our search.
We will install and activate Twenty Twenty as the example theme. It already has a good homepage with a nice blog feed without any demo content.
Depending on your theme, you may need to go to Settings > Reading in order to specify which page you would like to be displayed as your homepage.
Since blog content is the main offering, many blogs choose to display the Latest Posts section on their homepage. You also have the option of creating a Static Page, which allows you to have complete design control and not just a list of your blog posts. A number of themes offer demo content to create a static homepage.
We chose the Twenty Twenty theme, and decided to display the most recent posts on the homepage. Now we have the blog ready for design and blog posting.
Personalize the theme
It all comes down to which theme you choose and where your customization settings are located. A page builder theme will include many editing tools on the frontend editor.
However, you will find a few customization settings almost always within the WordPress Customizer.
Click on Appearance to edit these primary settings. Click on the Customize button to locate your theme.
This will reveal the WordPress Customizer. It is a standard way to edit many parts of your WordPress theme. Each theme has its own design elements in the WordPress Customizer.
Click the Site Identity button to get started. Click on the visual editing elements to choose the logo and tagline areas, then edit them directly from there.
The Site Identity module allows you to upload a new logo. You can also adjust the Site Title or Tagline, or remove them all together.
To ensure that your WordPress blog is exactly what you want, we recommend you go through each tab in the Customizer.
The Colors tab is an important tab. Here you can change the Background, Header, and Footer Background colors to suit your needs. You can see that I changed the background to a modern white color. Although these changes may seem minor, they are essential to learning how WordPress blogs work and establishing your brand.
Clicking on the Menus tab is a great idea. If you have a menu already, you can edit it.
Please fill in the Menu Name and indicate where you would like that menu to appear. There may be multiple places to place a menu in your theme. However, the main or desktop menu area is where the primary menu will appear on all pages of your website.
Keep going, make sure you click the Add Items button. You will see a variety of options to add pages and links to your menu. You can, for example, add pages or posts that you have already created to your menu or create your own links.
Each item you add is listed underneath the newly created menu. You can remove and add as many items you like, but don’t make your menu too cluttered. It will distract from your content.
The screenshot below shows the complete menu. There are four buttons: one for the homepage, another for an About page and a third for the Shop (if you have a shop). To make it easier for people to navigate, we also provide a link to our blog.
To have any changes in the WordPress Customizer take effect on your website’s design, you must publish them.
How to start a WordPress blog post
Writing and publishing blog posts is the first step to learning how to create a WordPress blog. This is the heart of your publication. It’s therefore important to learn how to make articles the best way possible.
Go to the WordPress dashboard and click on Posts > Create New. Click on any item in the post list to edit an already created post. A new website will not have any posts unless they were imported along with the demo content.
The WordPress Gutenberg page builder is now available. You may also have an additional page builder on your website. If this is the case, you can create and edit blog posts using that page builder.
The Gutenberg editor is a great tool for organizing posts and providing easy article-building tools.
Start by creating a title for the post. Next, use the content editor to add elements such as images and paragraphs.
To see the full range of content blocks that are available, click on the Add Block button. You can insert lists, columns and videos all with one click.
Click on the block you want to activate in the editor.
In this case, we will add an Image block. Either upload an image from your computer, or you can use the Media Library to reuse a photo that you have already uploaded to the site.
As you can see, by uploading an image, you have placed the relevant photo in the blog post.
WordPress offers several Block and Post Settings. You can optimize your article quickly by adding relevant, keyword-optimized Alt Text to all images.
To set tags and specify categories, go to the Post tab.
We recommend that you upload a featured photo, which will be the image that appears on blog feeds (such as your homepage), widgets and galleries. Remember that the featured image is not the first image that you add to the post content. This can make it difficult for newbies to WordPress.
Your post editor will display the Featured Image as a thumbnail.
After you are done writing your article, click on the Publish button to make it visible on the frontend.
To ensure that everything is correct and the post looks professional, make sure to preview it on the frontend.
Depending on the location where your blog posts have been published, you can access your Blog page or your Homepage.
This puts the most recent blog post at top, while past articles are moved one spot lower in order to make way for the new.
Additional Tips for Starting a WordPress Blog
While creating a WordPress blog takes only a few minutes to complete (depending on how customized you are), the customization and creation of content doesn’t need to stop there.
WordPress has many features that can be used to get you started, including FAQs and contact pages, email sign-up forms and more. We recommend the following best practices and tips that are primarily focused on building your audience and organic traffic over time:
- Create a contact form to allow people to reach you. Create a page in WordPress. Add a contact form using the Sitekit by Google plugin. Your contact information should not be listed. Because bots cannot remove your contact information, forms reduce spam.
- Add a tracking tool that will expand on the WordPress statistics. While WordPress stats might work for certain blogs, Google Analytics will give you more information about your visitors. You can link to Google Analytics from some themes. You might also consider downloading the Site Kit from Google plugin.
- To speed up your website, optimize your WordPress blog with SEO tools like Yoast SEO and Rank Math SEO.
- You might consider a WordPress.com site instead. WordPress.com is a hosted option. The whole hosting process is handled in the same location as your blog, making it easier for beginners. The monthly pricing is a bit more expensive, but it’s worth it for the convenience.
- Get started building your email list using a form tool such as MailChimp or MailPoet or the built-in WordPress email market feature. Email marketing is the best method to grow your blog and it’s usually free for smaller blogs.
- Consider how to monetize your blog using affiliate marketing, an eCommerce or advertising.
- Register for the many WordPress resources and learn about the best ways you can make money online, optimize blog posts, reach new readers, and how to get there. ecommerce-platforms.com is a great resource from the ecommerce side of things. There are many WordPress-specific blogs and forums that you can search, such as WPExplorer, CodeInWP and Elegant Themes.
Our conclusion on how to start a WordPress blog
The WordPress blogging experience is a great learning opportunity and a chance to establish yourself online. While some people blog only for a hobby, it is possible to make money online by focusing on niche topics like middle-aged travel or budget cooking.
We wish you all the best on your blogging journey. If you have any questions about how to create a WordPress blog, please let us know by commenting.
