3. BLOGGING FOR BEGINNERS
By Nabeel Shamshad
http://imnabeel.com
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................4
INGREDIENTS FOR A BLOG .........................................................................6
A Niche ..................................................................................................6
Knowledge .............................................................................................6
Domain Name.........................................................................................6
Hosting Account......................................................................................6
BUYING A DOMAIN NAME & HOSTING ..........................................................7
Step By Step Guide To Buying A domain name & Hosting.............................8
INSTALLING WORDPRESS IN YOUR HOSTING.............................................. 14
Step By Step Guide To Installing Wordpress ............................................. 14
THINGS TO DO WITH A BRAND NEW WORDPRESS WEBSITE......................... 21
Change The Title ................................................................................... 21
Change Tag Line ................................................................................... 22
Delete Default Post................................................................................ 22
Change The Theme ............................................................................... 23
Change Widgets.................................................................................... 24
4. BLOGGING FOR BEGINNERS
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http://imnabeel.com
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INTRODUCTION
Blog is a kind of website that maintains continuous chronological data. It
is an informational site that has discrete entries known as posts. Blogs
were in fact said to be online journals in the beginning where people
would write about a topic or use it as a diary but blogging has evolved a
lot ever since.
Blogging that was initially being done by individuals as a hobby has now
been adopted by businesses. Even individuals are now using it as their
main source of income. Blogging has now become a lot more than a
journal. In this advanced era it is being used for building brand
awareness, providing customer support, providing information, building
community etc.
Internet is filled with information related to this topic. Beginners desirous
to learn blogging often jump from one website to another in hopes of
finding a source that will guide them from very beginning but end up with
information overload. One has to spend days and even weeks to get
answers to all the newbie questions that arise in the mind of a beginner.
This guide does not claim to be the best Beginner’s Guide To Blogging but
this surely is a laser focused guide that will actually spoon feed you to get
your blog running.
What Will This Guide Teach You?
This ebook is a step by step guide to actually set up your blog and guides
you until the blog is finally live on the World Wide Web.
This book stays focused on the topic without beating about the bush. It
discusses all the necessary things and leaves those which make things
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By Nabeel Shamshad
http://imnabeel.com
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difficult without any gains. After all this is a guide to “Blogging For
Beginners”.
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http://imnabeel.com
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INGREDIENTS FOR A BLOG
Now that you have learnt most of the theoretical aspect, let’s get to more
practical aspect of blogging. Things that you would need to make your
own blog are as follows:
A Niche
Before you start a blog you must decide what your topic is going to be.
Preferably select a topic that interests you because, it will make it easy
for you to write engaging posts in it.
Knowledge
If you are planning to start your blog on a topic that you are not very
good at then it is recommend that you get some knowledge first or at
least select and identify sources which you can later use to enlighten
yourself on the topic.
Domain Name
It is the web address of your website www.yoursite.com. Detailed
explanation on domain names is given in later chapters.
Hosting Account
It is where your website / blog contents actually reside. Details are
discussed in coming chapters.
These are the most basic ingredients. Dozens more can be added to this
recipe but let us keep things simple for beginners. Hoping that you can
work on the first two ingredients yourself, I will now hold your hands and
take you through the step by process of actually creating your blog.
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BUYING A DOMAIN NAME & HOSTING
Domain:
A domain is the name of your website which you can refer to. People use
this name in their web browsers to visit your blog. For example
www.imnabeel.com is the domain name of a blog that I created to teach
internet marketing to beginners.
Any individual having some bucks can buy a domain name. You don’t
need to be a company or an organization to qualify for buying a domain
name. In order to purchase a domain name you will have to register it
from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)
through a domain name registrar. Domain name registrars are
organizations that manage reservations of domain names. A few good
examples of domain name registrars are NAMECHEAP (Recommended)
and GODADDY etc.
Hosting:
Website hosting or hosting account is a place where your actual website
and its files reside and in order to visit your website the domain name will
be used. That is why it is called a web address. As a domain name is
analogous to a company name, hosting is analogous to the building that
has all the infrastructure of that company.
Web hosting companies do not only provide you some space to host your
website, they also provide lots of other features with their hosting plans
such as regular backups of your website, firewall protection, technical
support, FTP access, email services etc. These services vary from host to
host. There are two different types of web host companies: Free ones and
Paid ones.
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Step By Step Guide To Buying A domain name & Hosting
Step 1: Signup on Namecheap by following This Link which I think is not
a difficult process for somebody who just downloaded this guide.
Step 2: After that sign in to your namecheap account and enter your
desired domain name in the large search box displayed at the center of
screen and click on the “search” button.
Step 3: You will see something like this if your desired name is available.
You can click on the grey colour cart button with a plus sign as shown on
the righter side of this image to add this domain in your cart.
Some other suggestions are also shown on the page which have the same
domain name as the one you entered but with different TLDs (Top level
domains). For example: in the above image the domain name is
“someexampledomain” and the TLD is “.com”. Similarly, different TLDs
with same domain name are shown in the suggestions section. For this
domain name suggestion section would show someexampledomain.net,
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http://imnabeel.com
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someexampledomain.org, someexampledomain.biz,
someexampledomain.tv and some other TLDs as suggestion. However,
.com is the TLD which is believed to be the most beneficial for your
website as it is the most common, easy to remember and good for search
engine optimization.
Step 4: In the previous step you added the domain in your cart and now
you are going to add a hosting plan to your cart. To do that in the
horizontal menu bar on right hand side, hover your mouse over “Hosting”
and click on the first option “Shared Hosting”. On new page that opens,
choose among four different available plans that are:
1. Value (Host up to 3 websites, 20 GB space) $3.98/month
2. Professional (Up to 10 websites, 50 GB space, Unlimited bandwidth)
$7.48/month
3. Ultimate (50 websites, unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth)
$13.98/month
4. Business (Not for simple sites, for very heavy sites like big
ecommerce sites) $19.98/month
I recommend no.1 that is VALUE plan. Being a beginner, one should first
start with one website only and after having some command over it
should move to building more. Value plan provides us with more than
enough resources to start our first website. After selecting your desired
plan, choose number of years from respective dropdown menu and click
on add to cart. Ignore data centre option (doesn’t make a difference).
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5.
Step 5: On the next page select the first option that is “I want to use a
domain in my cart” and select your domain from drop down menu (the 1
you bought in last chapter will appear in dropdown).
Click on orange continue button at the right hand side of the page.
Step 6: On the next page click on confirm order button to buy the items
in your cart.
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Step 7: On the next page you have to select the payment method from
three available options:
Choose the option that suits you and click on the orange “Continue”
button on the right hand side of the page to proceed with the payment
procedure. Congratulations now you have your very own domain name
and a hosting account.
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Step 6: Check inbox of your email account that you used to register on
namecheap. A few minutes after completing the hosting purchase you will
find an email from namecheap with following details.
Address of your cpanel: something like this https://server86.web-
hosting.com:1234/
Username
Password
Go the address of your cpanel by pasting it in browser’s address bar and
login using the provided user credentials. You will now see your cpanel
which looks something like this:
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This is the panel that will allow you to actually access the hosting space,
create a blog in it and do a lot of other things. However, in this guide we
are focusing on setting up your blog only and no other distractions.
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INSTALLING WORDPRESS IN YOUR HOSTING
If you remember I discussed about WORDPRESS being a free blogging
platform but you can use wordpress platform in two ways. First one is by
going to wordpress.com, registering an account (which is free) and then
making a free blog. The second way is to install their open source
platform in your own hosting space that you have bought. This way you
will have complete control over looks and functionalities of your blog. If
you don’t already know what Wordpress is, you need to be enlightened.
WORDPRESS is an open source tool that is used to create websites. It was
made to enable those who don’t know anything about coding and
programming to create professional looking websites with just a few
mouse clicks. It is the most powerful and the most popular blogging
platform and a Content Management System. A step by step guide about
installing WORDPRESS in your NAMECHEAP hosting goes here:
Step By Step Guide To Installing Wordpress
Step 1: Login to Cpanel and find the softaculous application by scrolling
down a little to the menu called “Software/Services”. Click on the app.
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Step 2: On the menu on left side click on “Blogs” to see all available
options and click on wordpress.
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Step 3: The new page will show some information about wordpress and
its rating. Click on the INSTALL button as shown in the figure.
Step 4: Now a form will appear in front of you as shown below.
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Choose Protocol: Here choose “http://” OR “http://www”
Choose Domain: Your purchased domain will appear here. Select it.
In directory: Leave it empty.
Database name: Leave it as it is, you don’t need to change it.
Table Prefix: Leave it as it is.
Site Name: Write the desired name Of your blog. For eg: “My Blog”
Site Description: Write some information about your site. May be a tag
line.
Admin Username: Write your desired username. It will be used to login to
your wordpress admin panel.
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Password: Set a good password with alphabets, numbers and special
characters.
Admin Email: This is the email address associated to your domain. You
can simply add “admin” before “@yourdomain.com”. Just like in my case
it would be “admin@imnabeel.com”.
Select Language: Choose your language.
Finally click on Install button. You will then see a page with following
message. Hoorah! You have installed wordpress successfully.
Click on the link shown as administrative url to see following login screen.
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Type in your admin username and password to login to your wordpress
admin area. Here is a screen shot of what admin area looks like.
As of now your main site will look something like this:
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http://imnabeel.com Page
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You can change the looks of your blog easily. You can see your blog live
at www.yourdomain.com and you can login to your blog’s admin area
using www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.php (change “yourdomain” with
your own domain name that you bought). You can use the admin panel to
change the theme of your blog, publish new posts and pages, install plug-
ins to add more functionality to your blog and much much more. Just play
around a little and you will learn the ways.
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THINGS TO DO WITH A BRAND NEW WORDPRESS
WEBSITE
Once your wordpress installation is complete, your blog is accessible using
your domain name from anywhere in the world but at this point it will
appear with its default theme, title, tag line, article and widgets. We don’t
want any of its default features because we have better plans for our blog
right? So here is a list of things with step by step instructions that need to
be done with a brand new wordpress website:
Change The Title
Default title of a new wordpress blog is “My Blog” or it may be something
other similar but we need to change it. In order to change it login to your
dashboard (admin area) and hover your mouse over the “settings” option
from the left vertical menu. Click on the “general” option from the sub
menu that appears. See the snapshot.
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The first thing on the page that opens is “Site Title”. Write your desired
title in the text field.
Change Tag Line
Just beneath the “site title” option on the same page is “tag line” option
that can also be edited easily. After editing the site title and site tagline
click on the “save changes” button at the bottom of the page. Site tag line
appears on every page of the blog beneath the site title but some themes
don’t show it.
Delete Default Post
A new installation of worpress comes with a default post with title “Hello
World” which needs to be deleted. To do so, click on the “posts” option
from left vertical menu bar to go to a page where all the posted articles or
posts are listed.
In the above example an article posted on my website with title “600k+
GSA SER Verfied List (7th March 2015)” can be seen. The default “Hello
World” article will appear on the same place in a brand wordpress blog. To
delete that post hover your mouse over post to make options appear and
then click on “Trash” as pointed out by an arrow in the above picture.
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Change The Theme
The default theme for wordpress is “Twenty Fourteen” but might be
changed in near future as 2015 has already started. The default theme
does not suit all types of websites/blogs. If it is a personal diary type
blog, it might suit well but you need better theme if you want to build a
brand and do some business. To change the theme hover your mouse
over “Appearance” option in left menu bar to open a sub menu. Click on
theme.
A page with all the available themes will open. You can apply any of the
installed themes by hovering mouse over that theme and clicking on the
“Activate” button that appears or you can see a live preview of that theme
before you apply that (See number in the picture below). You also have
the option to search the wordpress.org for more free themes or add your
purchased themes by clicking on the “Add New” button (See number 2 in
the image):
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Change Widgets
Widgets add different features to your sidebars or footers. A new
wordpress blog has some of the following applied as default widgets:
1. Search Widget
2. Calender Widget
3. Archive Widget
4. Meta Widget
We don’t need Meta widget as it includes links like “Log in, Register etc”.
You can keep this widget if you can’t remember the login url that is
“yourdomain.com/wp-login.php” but you will never find this widget
appearing on any popualr website. You may also delete the calendar
widget as it serves no more purpose than telling what we can easily find
elsewhere. To edit widgets hover your mouse over “Appearance” and click
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on the “Widgets” link that appears in sub menu. You will be taken to a
page like the one shown below.
Available widgets are listed on the left side which can be dragged and
dropped into available sidebars that appear on right side of the above
image. Different themes have different available widgets and different
sidebars. Some themes allow using widgets in footers as well while others
don’t.
Your blog is now ready and does not look like a newly setup blog but
there are many more things that still need to be done with your blog like
making your About Us, Contact us, Privacy Policy pages, getting a good
logo for your site and setting up favicon etc etc. I know you want your
blog to look like a professional one and an authority in your niche. What I
just told you in this chapter was only the beginning. A complete check of
list of things that need to be taken care of in a new blog to make it
perfect will guide you in the right direction.
