How can I setup my own blog?

You have a few options to consider:

• What type of blog do I want? This is really the software that runs the blog.
• Do I wanted a hosted blog (someone else hosts the blog) or do I want to host my own blog (I already have a host or want a host.)

Again, we will refer to this Problogger’s blog He has a great article Choosing a Blog Platform that explains this top in-depth.

Have you read that article yet? If not, go back and read it!

If you have decided on a hosted blog then go ahead and choose a blog and get started. If you want to host your own blog, keep reading.

Some basic steps to install your own wordpress blog

As I continue with the example of how to setup your own blog, I am going to give Wordpress as example since that is what we have chosen for our blog. Setting up other blog types is similar, just follow the instructions on their website.

Installation:

My chosen host and many other major hosts install the major blog systems with a click of a button. I asked my install wordpress and about 5 minutes later I was ready to start. If your doesn’t offer this feature, you need to follow the install instructions on the package. (Read through the wordpress install and see if you are up to this: Wordpress Install )

Installing Theme/Design/Style:

First, the default theme they start with is boring. So you need to go liven it up. Wordpress Themes has a whole list of sites to find themes. The site I liked the best for choosing my theme was at Theme Viewer. I liked this site because after customizing our blog the first time I realized that there were many things I wanted and my theme didn’t provide them. So I spent a whole weekend redo’ing our blog.

So what are you looking for?

Widget Ready: I highly suggest you get a Widget Ready theme. A widget ready theme allows the administrator very easy customizable sidebars. Here is our widgets and you just drag and drop them where you want and you click on the blue and black lined squares to configure them. The Sidebar1 is our left side of the blog and Sidebar2 is our right side of the blog. (Connie spends a lot of time rearranging them on me.) There is a tray at the bottom that holds the extras. Look at this diagram & you’ll see that it’s our blog’s sidebars.

Number of Columns: How many columns do you want? We chose the three column blog.

Fixed/Fluid Width: The last important thing is the fixed or fluid width. Fixed width means that when the user expands or shrinks the window, the blog stays the same size. Fluid width means that the blog expands when the user expands or shrinks the window. I personally like the fluid width but it can get you into trouble. (Our images in the blog have to a certain setting so they don’t overlap into our sidebars.)

Now that you have an idea of what you want, head back to the Theme Viewer and choose your requirements and see if there is blog theme you like. If not, head to the many other links at Wordpress Themes and browse. This can take hours. Once you find one that you like, you need to download it, unzip it, and ftp into your themes folder on your wordpress host, and activate it. Here are the detailed instructions: Wordpress Theme Installation.

At this point, if you have experience you can customize the theme to your liking. This goes way beyond the scope of this post.

Installing plug-ins:

This last step makes your blog work and have all the nice extra features. Installing plug-ins is similar to installing themes except you place the files in the plug-ins folder instead of the theme folder. Wordpress plug-ins information. Again much of the time spent is hunting or looking for what you want.

I will list some of the plug-ins that I think are necessary or nice:

• akismet: comes installed with wordpress, activate and enter your activition code, and this will stop all those spam comments. Absolutely necessary
• Wordpress Database Backup: You can backup your wordpress information. I have mine configured to mail me my backup weekly. Absolutely necessary.
• Tagging plug-in: This helps those search engines find your blog. I chose Simple Tagging I found it easy to use. Other suggestions are Ultimate Tag Warrior or Jerome’s Keywords
  
• Subscribe Me: This allows the blog readers to easily subscribe to your blog in different configurable ways.
• Bookmark Me: This allows the blog readers to easily bookmark your blog in different configurable ways.

Start Blogging

You now have installed blog, with a theme to your liking, with a few plug-ins. Start blogging… See what you like… See what you want to change… See what you want to add… I think our blog has at least one change per week. It may not be visible but it is change.

Once you start blogging, you want to start sharing your blog with technorati, feedblitz, etc… But this is better left to another blog entry.

Some things you should do for blog maintenance:

• Backup your blog database. (Our is automatically done with the wordpress database backup plug-in.)
• Copy all your theme files back to your computer and store them there. This serves to purposes: If the server crashes you have your stuff. If you edit a file and your blog stops working, you have a file to replace it with. (This is especially important when you have a sister that is starting to edit the files.)
• Periodically check and see if you need to install the latest blog software. Updates are every few months. This is especially important because of security issues. Many of the upgrades of blogs fix security issues.
• Periodically check and see if you need to upgrade your plug-ins.

Note from Connie – See what I mean??? Heidi KNOWS!! She has done such a great job in setting our blog up not once, but twice. And I LOVE being able to move widgets around in the sidebars. (A widget is each item in the sidebar: like the Search Button, the About Us box, etc). It’s so nice to be able to click & drag the widgets around whenever I want to. (I did put in some html code one weekend, but that isn’t safe considering my lack of knowledge. And that’s why Heidi talks about backing up your blog! But I have never broken ours……yet! *grin* But she’s ready just in case!)

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