Step 1: Domain & Web Hosting

In order to startup a blog or site which you can monetize and hopefully make money from, you will need a domain name and professional hosting.  While there are various free hosted solutions out there, they are generally already supported by advertising or limited in the extent to which you may customize them.

Web Hosting

For web hosting, I would recommend BlueHost $6.95 unlimited account for several reasons. Its unlimited in terms of storage, bandwidth and the number of domains you can host on the account – making it the perfect hosting for all of your online ventures and startups. Also, it comes with cPanel, which is a powerful tool for managing your websites, domains, subdomains and so forth. It also comes with a great scripts installer, meaning it is as easy as pie to install content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and many others I will be using for my online startups and providing guides for in the process.  It also comes with a free domain name.

Domain Name

There are various domain registrars out there, our current favourite is name.com.  However, if you are using a BlueHost account you will get to register a domain free when signing up for your web hosting account.

There are some great tools out there for selecting your domain name, but if search engine ranking and keyword optimization is important to you – for instance, if you are planning on developing a niche site – then it is  imperative that you have the keyword you are targeting in the domain name.  For finding the right domain, Domain Samurai is a great free tool. The same company also offers a free trial of Market Samurai which is an indispensable and more in-depth tool for finding the right keywords to target when creating niche sites, filtering out the markets penetrated with heavy competition, and allowing you to focus on a market where a first page search ranking is attainable.  Alternatively, the free keywords tool in AdSense can be used to find markets to target, as can a simple google search.

Some other tools for finding domain names, and even business or blog names are great for a simple site, but will not generally help in search optimization or attaining a high search result.  These include a variety of domain name generators, web 2.0 name generators, and domain search tools, the list we are compiling is available here.

Once you have a domain and web-hosting, you’ll be able to move on to the next step.. installation.

Step 2: Installing WordPress

Log in to your web host’s control panel.

If you are using BlueHost then go to ‘Simple Scripts’, located under Software/Services.

If you are using other web hosting with cPanel, a similar scripts install program may be available under the names of ‘Softaculous’ or ‘Fantastico’.  While we will not be covering installation of wordpress with these install scripts, they will present many of the same options as installing via simple scripts with BlueHost will.

Next, you will see a page similar to the following.

• Under Step 1 select where you would like to install wordpress – your domain should be one of these options.  Leave the box after the / empty, unless you would like to install wordpress to a particular folder, for instance mydomain.com/blog.
• Then, under Step 2 ‘click here to display’ the advanced options.

Under the advanced options, you should receive the following.

• Give your blog a name – this will be the title of your home page, and depending on your configuration later will generally also appear on other pages.
• Create an administrator username and password – with this you will log in to manage your site, post blogs and create pages.  This username will generally appear as the person who has ‘posted’ most of the content on your site, although other user accounts can be setup from which you can blog.
• Click to agree to the terms and conditions.
• Hit complete!

Then, you should receive a page signifying your install has been completed.  Two links should be provided.

• Here, the first is the link to your new site that the public and everyone else will see.
• The second – something like yourdomain.com/wp-admin/ – is the link to your administration panel, from which you can change the site settings and make posts.

Step 3: Administration Area Layout

Before logging into the administration area I would like to explain one key concept when it comes to wordpress.  Content in wordpress is generally divided into two types: Posts and Pages.

• Posts are your normal blog post, are generally dated, contain the authors name and appear consecutively (with the newest at the top) on the ‘Home’ page, as well as the pages for the categories to which the posts were marked.  These posts can generally be commented on.
• Pages are more like static pages, in that they contain a simple page, generally undated and without an authors name.  They can be easily configured to appear differently to the blog pages, for instance without the usual sidebar appearing.  Thus these are perfect for your content which should not appear in a news-like format, such as your ‘About Us’ pages, and pages containing policy information and so forth.  These pages cannot generally be commented on.

Now log in.  The administration area can seem a bit daunting at first.  However, this part of our guide aims to make grasping it a simple task.

When you first login to the administration area, you should arrive at the dashboard.
In the left hand column, you can view a count of posts, pages, comments etc.  Next down you can view recent comments, and one box down again a handy list of blogs that have linked to your blog.  You can also view plugins, and the latest news from Yoast.  Yoast provides some Search Engine Optimization plugins for WordPress, but we’ll cover that more in our later posts on SEO for your wordpress site.
In the right hand column, QuickPress allows you to quickly make a blog post, and beneath it recent drafts can be viewed.  Underneath appears the latest from the wordpress blog, and other wordpress news.

Now, on the very left you should notice the main menu for the administration area.

• Posts is where you go to make, edit or draft blog posts.  From here you can also manage the categories and subcategories in to which you will place your posts.
• Media allows you to manage images and videos that have been uploaded, which can generally be done when making or editing a post or page.  For now, it is not too important.
• Links allows you to make links and categories for those links, which will appear in widgets (kind of like boxes on the right or left hand sidebar(s)).  Again, not too important for now.  If these links appear on your site, which will depend on what theme you are using and which widgets you have selected, you may delete or change them from this menu.
• Pages allows you to create, modify and draft static pages.  As mentioned above, these are perfect for content that you do not want to appear in a blog or news-like manner.  You will see when editing a page, on the right under Page Attributes, you can alter how the particular page appears.
• Comments allows you to view existing, pending, spam, or trashed comments.

In the next section down-

• Appearance allows you to change several things.  First, from here you can install different themes. Plugins gives you the option to install new plugins or manage the settings for existing ones.  You can also deactivate and delete plugins from here.
• Users allows you to manage the registered users on your site.  You can create new users here for friends, colleagues etc.  You can also edit your profile from here, if you want to change your username, password
• Tools will appear here. By default there are only 2, ‘Post This’ and ‘Categories and Tags Converter’.  Both can be quite handy, so take a look.  Just drag the press this link to your bookmarks, then when you come across something you’d like to blog about, highlight it and click your ‘Press This’ bookmark.
  
• Settings is your first stop for editing most of your core site settings.  A variety of settings are broken down into further menu options- Settings > General > allows you to change everything from your site’s title, through description, address, contact email, date/time format and more.
  • Settings > Writing > manage the size of blog posts, whether to convert emoticons to images, as well as options for writing posts and submitting them via email or otherwise remotely.
  • Settings > Reading > allows you to change how your front/home page appears.
  • Settings > Discussion > allows you to manage your comment settings, such as whether comments require approval, whether users must be registered etc.
  • Settings > Media > set your default image and thumbnail sizes, default upload folders.
  • Settings > Privacy > select whether to block search engines from viewing your site.
  • Settings > Permanlinks > a key to Search Engine Optimization.  Soon we will be posting a tutorial on SEO for wordpress.
  • Finally, other settings options may appear for a variety of plugins you have installed.