Blogging Guide

Welcome to Net-Entrepreneur.Com Blogging Guide, where you will find whatever you need to know to start your own blog. This is a work in progress, so expect new content soon.
Last update: 23 March 2008

Good luck.

 

Table of Contents

1. Preparation
1.1. Domains - Claiming your identity
1.2. Hosting - Renting your land
1.3. Platform - Building your house
1.4. Theme - Decorating you house

2. Launch and First Steps

3. Maintenance
3.1. Test Running
3.2. Backups - Insuring Your Property

 

Preparation

Domains

The first thing you will have to do if you are serious about starting your blog is to register a domain name. This is going to be your first investment in your Internet identity or a brand, if you will.
This is rather cheap, around $10US for a .com domain for a year. Despite of having lucrative price tags, I would recommend avoiding domains such as .info, .biz, and others, for having a less professional aura.

Read more in my Establishing Net Presence (1) article.

Hosting

Whilst after registering your domain and gaining access to the control panel you will feel like a seasoned domainer, your preparation stage is not over yet. You must find a good hosting provider to host your blog.
I’d say that this market is a developed one and competition has brought prices to be leveled at about $7US /month for a basic hosting plan that would suit a beginner blogger. There are a few things to be aware of, like the option for add-on domains. If a hosting provider allows for 5 add-on domains, it means that you would be able to host 5 different domains for the same price. Look for a provider that offers unlimited add-on domains.

Read more in my Establishing Net Presence (2) article.

Platform

You have to choose a blogging platform to support your blog. I am using WordPress because of its many advantages, such as: one of the largest communities, hundreds of free themes and plugins that would do just about anything you can think of.

Read more in my Establishing Net Presence (3) article.

Themes

Before moving into any house you want it to be your house. You need to do interior design, some tapestry, some paint touchups. It is much easier with your visrtual property, and now that you have chosen WordPress it is even easier.

Read more in my Giving Your Blog Personality article.

 

Maintenance

Test Running

You will want to try different design ideas and plugins. There are two ways of doing this:

1. Testing online, but it has a few disadvantages:

• You mistakes will be visible for all to see. And you will make mistakes, everyone does.
• The second one is that your changes will be indexed in search engines pretty swiftly, that way your mistakes will have the tendency to stick around for while even after you fixed everything.

2. The second way is to do this offline.

Read more in my Safely Tweaking Your Wordpress Blog article.

Backups - Insuring Your Property

As one of the most important things to do in the real world is to insure your property, one of the most important maintenance things to do online is to backup your WordPress database. This is easily done, and you will only have to set it up once.

Read more in my 1 Easy Step to Prevent the Loss of Your No.1 Asset article.