Build a Blog

In my last post I talked about how easy it can be to forget the frustration and impatience that you can feel as an absolute beginner blogger, trying to figure out how on earth you do with this blogging thing! So this series of posts is for all the absolute beginner bloggers out there that want to create a blog using Wordpress.com, but would like some help and support doing so.

Right, so here we go, I’ll take you through step by step how to create the blog in the first place, by creating a test blog with Wordpress so you can follow and see exactly what we are doing at each stage. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments at the bottom of the post.

Step 1. Go to Wordpress.com, on the right it says, ‘Express yourself. Start a Blog.’ click on the ’sign up now’ button.

Step 2. It will take you to a form to create a Wordpress.com account. The Username and Password will be used to login to your blogs admin or backend where you’ll post and edit articles to your blog. It can be anything you want just make a note of it.

Step 3. On the next page you’ll choose the blogs domain name or URL (they all end in .wordpress.com) by default they put the username in that you’ve just picked, delete it and replace with whatever you want (you can’t change this). Here you’ll also choose the blog’s title which appears at the top of the blog (this you can change). When you sign up they will check if the blog domain name that you have chosen is unique before proceding, if not you’ll need to tweek until you find one thats not taken. At the bottom you can start filling your profile in now or wait til later. Last thing to do is activate your account by going to the email that they’ve just sent you and click the link.

Step 4. Voila, it’s done the blog is live! After activating the account you can login with the Username and Password that you just created. At the top of the Wordpress dashboard click on the blogs name and it will take you to your newly created blog, take a look around the blog (not much to see yet) and the dashboard, (all the major links are down the left hand side of the dashboard) this is where all the behind the scenes magic happens. At the moment it’s using the default theme that comes with every installation, the Kubrick theme (but we can soon change that).

Right, now we can start to make some changes. I’m going to change my blog title and blogs tagline (the line underneath the blog title – just another wordpress.com weblog) to start with, go back to the Wordpress dashboard and down the left hand side at the bottom go to Settings – General. Here I can change the blog title and blog tagline and then update.

Step 5. Next I want to get rid of the welcome post and the welcome comment that automatically appears whenever you start a blog. To do this you go to the dashboard again and in the middle you’ll see ‘right now’ with the number of posts, pages, comments etc.. underneath. Click on ‘1 post’ and wordpress will take you to the edit post screen, then hover over the title. Wordpress will give you the option to edit, quick edit, trash or view, just click on trash and it’s gone. Now you can write your own welcome post instead.

Now for the comment. Because you’ve deleted the post that the comment was attached to it deletes the comment as well. But while we’re on the subject here’s how to delete a comment: Underneath ‘right now’ you’ll see recent comments, again just hover over the comment and you’ll see 5 options: unapprove, reply, edit, spam or trash. You’ve got it, click trash!

Step 6. Last job to do is go and finish updating your profile. In the top right hand corner of the dashboard you’ll see Howdy [name] that link will take you to the profile page. Personally I scroll down to ‘Name’ and change my nickname and how my name displays publicly to something other than my username, so it’s harder for someone to hack into the blog. Fill in the rest to your own taste and then update profile at the bottom. Done.

Ok that’s it, for now anyway. It’s a very easy process and an easy blogging platform to use – especially when you know how. Here’s what the blog looks like now with the changes:

That didn’t take long. Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments…

Mandy

If you enjoyed this article then please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed and never miss another one!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.