Wordpress is widely used, accepted and is a very good product. If you are going to start your own blog, or if you want to change over to your own domain name, I would highly recommend looking into Wordpress. It is pretty straight forward to use, but also has enough features, plugins and support that it can meet the needs of most users. If you are going to use Wordpress, you are going to need to get a domain name and a host.
If you don’t have a domain name or a host, there are a number of providers out there. Many providers will give you a free domain with hosting, or a cheaper domain registration with hosting. I host a couple different places, Netfirms and GoDaddy. They are both reasonably priced, meet my needs now, and seem to offer expansion options that can meet my needs in the future. I’ve used Netfirms for many many years now. I’ve never had any problems with them. I’ve used GoDaddy for a couple years for domain registrations, and off and on for hosting. I like them, but have problems with front page extension issues off and on. If you’re starting from ground zero, just go to GoDaddy.com.
From the front page, you can search for a domain name that is not taken, sign up for hosting. You probably will get some kind of discount, so add them both to your cart at once. When you are set up and have your site and hosting, log into your account. On the right hand side of the page should be a link that says my account. Click on this and you will get to your control panel. Click on the hosting & email tab. It should have a hosting account list. Click on the open link under the control panel listing.
From this control panel, click on the content link, then on the GoDaddy hosting connection link. On the left side, click on the blogs tab, then on Wordpress. There will be an install now button that you can click on, and GoDaddy will walk you through the rest. During the setup, you will have an option to put Wordpress in the main directory, or to create a directory to put it in. If you plan on having a website in addition to your blog, as two separate entities, I would suggest creating a /blog folder to put it in. If you are only going to use Wordpress on this domain, go ahead and put it in the main directory.
That’s it, pretty simple. You will get an email with a link to your blogs homepage, click that link and you’re ready to roll. You can login, click on write post and start posting immediately. Pretty straight forward to get things set up and running. In my next post, I will go into detail about how to use an FTP program and some of the features you can take advantage of with the robust Wordpress program.
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