It would seem that everyone today wants to start a blog, and the way most people start is by using a free blogging platform such as ‘Blogger’ or other free blogging services like ‘Typepad’. However, sooner or later you will want to have more control over your blog by having your own domain name and hosting, this will ensure that you blog never gets shut down. One of the best ways to do this is by installing a WordPress blog on your own domain name and this article will show you the five easy steps to setting up WordPress on your own domain.
If you have never done this before it can seem quite complicated but in actual fact it is very easy to do. It can also be confusing by the fact that there are two different sorts of WordPress blogs. WordPress.com is a free blog service much like Google’s blogger, whilst WordPress.org is what we will be using to install our blog on our own domain name. This gives us much more control than we get from using the free services.
Step one: In order to host your own blog the first things you will need are a domain name and a hosting account. The domain name will be the web address of your new blog, and if this is going to be a personal blog then it is a good idea to try to use your own name in the domain. It is also a good idea to keep your domain name and your hosting account with separate companies. This just keeps you a little bit more control although it is no big deal if you have them both the same company.
Step two: By now you will have your domain name pointing to your hosting account and the first thing you need to do is go into Cpanel. This is the main dashboard for controlling your hosting account, now scroll down until you see and icon called Fantastico and click that.
Step three: This will show you all the different scripts that you can install from this location. From here find WordPress and click on it.
Step four: This will bring you to a very simple install page have a quick look at it and if all seems correct click the install now button. You will then be asked which directory you will want to install your blog in, for most of us we will install the blog in the root directory, this means that we do not have to enter anything you. On the other hand if you want to install that blog in any other directory then just type in the name of the directory here and your blog will be installed.
Step five: So that is it, your blog is installed on your own hosting account and all you have to do now is log in and choose which theme you want to use for your blog, and what plugins you need to install, but this is the subject of a later article.
