credit: bionicteaching

There’s an odd chill in the air. Something’s not right. Or is it? You’ve been debating with yourself for the longest time whether it’s worth your time, effort, energy, charisma, breath and a whole bunch of other traits that you don’t necessarily even posses to set up your very own Wordpress blog. I’m here to tell you, my dear, sweet, most likely oversized plump, American internet user, that it is time to set up a blog. Yes. A blog of your very own. A blog that will let you share your inner-most feelings, passions, and other important stuff like that with the rest of the digital world. After all, if KANYE WEST CAN DO IT, YOU CAN TOO!

. . . If you didn’t get the point from the above paragraph, that odd chill in the air was the universe telling you – in a very subtle manner, mind you – that it is time for you to create a Wordpress Blog. The best part is that I’m going to hold your hand, or for those who find that a little weird, I’m going to guide you through, step by step, How To Set Up A Wordpress Blog!

Strap on your birthday suit, and lets get to it!

QUICK INFO:

Estimated Completion Time
Grandparents: 1 Week to the rest of your life, respectively.
Middle-Aged People: 2-5 Days
Young Shit-Kickers: 1 hour to 1 day

Your System Info
I’m writing this guide with PC (not MAC/Apple) users in mind.

Let me break it down for those of you out there who are completely new to the concept of blogging. A blog is a website where you can share information with the world – in Journal format. That’s it. Journal format being dated posts. The most recent content is typically shown first. Now to make a blog ‘go’ there are a few vital elements that need to be in place. 1: A CMS (Content Management System). The best, most famous, and most functional is Wordpress. Wordpress is free and it is what I’m going to show you how to install on your server. i.e. your web host. 2: Web Hosting. A web host is basically a company with a bunch of amazing computers that ‘host’ or hold your site files so the world can see them. 3: Content. This is where you come in, my dear friend. A blog is simply a blank website with nothing, or no value to anyone without a passionate author, blogger, or content boss.

STEP 1:

Find A Wordpress Blog Web Host!

You need a reliable and great priced Web Host. We recommend Dreamhost. Heck, they even offer a Free Trial!  For several other choices, check out this page. You shouldn’t have to pay more than $5.00 a month for your blog web hosting. If that’s too much for you, then I’m not quite sure what to tell you besides maybe go pan-handle for a day. You should be able to raise enough cash in a day to pay for your blog for a year.

STEP 2:

A. Download Wordpress! This is completely, terribly, ridiculously easy. Why? Because I say it is. “How to do it, Senior?” You may ask. Go HERE and click the huge “Download Wordpress [version#]” button. Let me tell you what this is going to do. It’s going to download a folder called “wordpress[version#].zip” to your computer. Got it downloaded? Know where the file is on your hard drive? No? Find it. Found it? Get it, got it? Good. Golden. I’m proud of you, my compadre. Lets skip on down to part B where I tell you what to do with that .zip folder and how to make it useful. Put simply, you’re going to upload the content that is inside of that wordpress.zip folder onto your web host’s server. How are you going to do that? You’re going to extract the files from the wordpress.zip folder. Extracting the files is a fancy way of saying unpackaging the files from the zip folder and putting them into a normal folder.

B. Unzip! This is the exciting part! Okay, not like that. That was bad. This is the part where you unzip your wordpress.zip folder. To do this, you’re going to need an unzipping program called 7-zip. There are other ways of doing this, but just follow my lead, dangit. It’s a lot easier that way. Go to the 7-zip site and download the program you need. In most cases, you will just need to click the “download” link in the table next to the “.exe” file type. From here, you should be able to run the program setup and install 7-zip. Got that done? Another pat on the back! It’s all gravy from here! . . . kind of.

STEP 3:

A. Upload Files to your server. Once you either pay for web hosting, or start a free web hosting trial (from our page full of links), you will need to create 2 things within your web hosting administration. Each web host has a different set up, but the process is the same. 1. A Database. Don’t worry. This probably seems intimidating. Don’t let it be. You should be able to find where to do this by knowing the keyword “MYSQL”. That should get you there. If you can’t figure it out, consult your web host, or us. 2. An FTP account and login information. Consult your web host on how to do this if you can’t figure it out. Keep your FTP login information handy, you’re going to need it soon. 3. An FTP Client like FileZilla. FileZilla is a free piece of software that is priceless. It lets you connect with your web hosts server so you can put files on it. Hint: you’re going to be uploading the extracted Wordpress files to your server via this FTP program. Now that you have downloaded and installed FileZilla on your computer, you’re going to need to open that program up, and create a new site. The “Host” field is either your IP address, or just yoursite.com, or something.yourhostingcompany.com. If you’re not sure, ask your web host. The username and password should be easy to figure out because you just created them. Once you have all that information filled out, connect!

Once you connect, you will usually see a “public_html” folder. Click inside of this. Now you should see a white window. On the left side of FileZilla, navigate to where your extracted Wordpress files are located. Click inside this folder so that you can see files like “wp-config” and folders like “wp-admin”. If you see that on the left side of the FileZilla window, and a blank window on the right (your remote server), then you’re doing good! Now, on the left side of FileZilla select all of those Wordpress files. You can do this by clicking the top file (or folder), now hold shift, and select the bottom file (or folder). Now that you have all of the files and folders selected, right+click on the selected files and click “upload” this will begin the upload sequence. You have just sent the files from your computer, to your web hosts server. Congrats.

When the files finish uploading, go to yourwebsite.com. You should see a Wordpress walk-through screen. This is the last step in setting up your blog. Follow the little guide, and it will tell you what to do. Fill out all of the required database information and attempt to connect. If everything is good to go, you will see an “Alright Sparky!” (or something like that) notification. Take special note of the login credentials it provides. You will need this information to log in for the first time. After you log in to your Wordpress admin panel once, you can change your password and create a real username (instead of just “Admin”).

Quick Tips:

Log in to your Wordpress Admin: The default path is this: http://yoursite.com/wp-admin. Unless you installed it inside a different directory such as: http://yoursite.com/directory/wp-admin.

Change Your Password: Once you log in to your Wordpress Admin panel, look along the left side of your screen until you see “Users”. Click the arrow to expand the options for this category, then click “Authors & Users”. Once here, hover over the username you desire to change the password for, and click “Edit”. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and fill in a new password. Don’t forget to click the “Update Profile” button! Now you can log out, and log back in with your new password!

Write your first post: Once you log in to your Wordpress Admin panel, look along the left side of your screen until you see the “Posts” tab. Click the arrow to expand this, then you will see “Add New”. Click that. Share your earth shattering information with the world, and don’t forget to click “Publish” (on the right side). Now you can go to your blog’s home page and your post should be displayed!

Have a question? Have something say? Let us know in the comments!

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