It’s the new trend, creating a blog. Everyone has one somewhere, even if they don’t use it. In fact the majority of blogs probably still have the “Hello World” post.

In this article I am going to show you how to create a blog, from scratch using some very good and easy to use tools. I will also show you how to install themes, widgets and any other thing you can think of that can clutter up that little sidebar to the right. As much as people think they are of use, they really are not. Anyway, this is not time for me to rant about the silly usage of these widgets. Let’s begin.

Step 1: Choosing your platform

There are plenty of different blogging systems that you can use these days, most of them are very easy to use and easy to customise. I am just going to assume you’re after a simple blog to start off with. Here’s a list of the different blogging platforms I recommend with a brief description, in no particular order:

1. Wordpress
The worlds most popular blogging platform, this is an open source project that is made by hundreds of people. There are literally thousands of pre-made themes available free for download. Wordpress is what I have been using for the past 4 years for a blog. The reason this is best is because the support base is massive, there’s an entire forum dedicated to helping people with their Wordpress problems. You can either use this on your own server or register at wordpress.com for a free account which will automatically set a Wordpress blog for you.

2. Blogger
Blogger is even easier than Wordpress when it comes to setting up and posting blog entries. This is another thing to come out of Google, as expected it’s a brilliant tool and really does work a treat! The customisation is limited as you cannot do any raw coding to the templates. I cannot tell you much about this in detail as I have not used it a lot.

3. Blogsmith
Blogsmith is the choice of the leading blog sites like Engadget and the world renowned Autoblog. Blogsmith is an easily customisable blogging suite.

4. Movable Type
Probably the closest to Wordpress in the fact it has so many features and you can easily customise it. If Wordpress didn’t exist Movable Type would be the worlds leading blogging software. If you like good user interfaces to administer things then you’ll love this. It includes a very intuitive layout which is easy to grasp within the firs few minutes of using it.

Step 2 - Installing/Setting Up Your Blog

Seeing as Wordpress is my software of choice the article from here on will instruct you how to install Wordpress, get a theme of your choice running it and making sure you don’t get buried in spam comments.

So, you’re ready to get your blog set up and you have a web server to set it up on. You now need to download Wordpress from the site. Click here to download the newest version to your computer. Now you need to extract the contents of the ZIP file into a folder on your computer. I suggest you do this on your desktop to allow easy access, you can do it anywhere else you want on your PC but make sure you can remember where you put it.

Now, login to your FTP server, upload the contents of the folder you just extracted to your server. This should be easy as dragging all the content of that folder onto the FTP server. Be sure it is all in the root of your site. If you want it in a sub directory then follow these instructions as if the sub directory was the root. Once you are sure all the contents of the wordpress folder are uploaded, browse to your server via HTTP. So, for example if your domain name was example.com browse to example.com in your web browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox or similar…). Here you will be presented with the wordpress setup screen. Click next here, you will see some entry fields like this:

Make sure you fill the “Blog Name” and “Email” fields in correctly, especially the email one as you cannot recover your password if you lose it without this. Before proceeding any further, you will notice there is a field that says “Database Name” and “Database server address”. You don’t need to change the server name is most cases as by default database servers are installed on the same machine as the web server. You will need to open a new browser window and log into your hosting control panel now, find the section for administering your database. I’m going to assume you are using mySQL as this is the industry standard for databases. Click the button that says “create new database” or “New table” or something similar, it will vary depending what host you use and what control panel systems they use. Now name the new table “Blog” (without quotes).

Go back the Wordpress install screen and enter Blog into the “Database name” field. This should now be ready for you to complete the installation, click next. You should be presented with a quirky message along the lines of “All right sparky! You’ve got this far now let’s create the database entires.” Click next. Be careful here, as you can void your installation if you mess this up. You’ll get a screen with your username and a new auto-generated password. Proceed with caution, highlight the password making sure you don’t get any white space either side of the password and copy it. Now browse to your root of the site (example.com). Click login and type your Username then paste the password into the password field. Proceed to login. If you see a control panel that says “Howdy, name” then you’ve successfully installed your blog. BUT, make sure you do this one last thing. At the top of the screen you will see the name of your blog in big text, underneath a row of tabs on a menu bar. Click “Users” and scroll down, you will see two password boxes. In these boxes type a new password twice, make sure it is something you can remember and press submit. You now have everything in place to begin making your blog look how you would like it.

Step 3 - Finding And Installing A Custom Wordpress Theme

So, now you have installed your software you are going to want to make it your own and look nice. This is probably the easiest part of the entire process. First, choose your theme! Here are some good sources to get a free theme from:

1. Official Wordpress theme directory
This is the largest theme directory there is for Wordpress, it is the official theme directory run by the developers of Wordpress. It has useful search filters to allow you to get results that suit your needs. For example: If you need a 3 collumn theme with a green color scheme, you can filter all those out with a few tick boxes.

2. Alexking.org Wordpress theme directory
Some very nice themes submitted by users, it has an excellent live theme preview system that allows you to see them in action for real on a real installation of Wordpress.

3. WP Theme Spot
Even though the themes on this site are a bit sparse on this site they are a very high quality selection, perfect for the everyday blogger.

Know of any more theme directorys? Let me know and I’ll add them!

Now, you should have your theme picked out and you should have downloaded it, most themes come in ZIP format. So, extract the contents into a folder on your computer. Log in to your FTP again like we did earlier when we uploaded wordpress onto your server. You will see some folders along with the .php files we uploaded earlier. Find the folder called “wp-content” (Without the quote marks, duhh!), open this folder. You will now see some other folders inside this called “plugins” “themes” and “uploads”. Open the “themes” folder. You’ll see some folders in there names “Default” and “Classic”. Copy the folder containing your theme into the “themes” folder on your server. So, for example if your theme is called “Blue1″ you should have a folder called “Blue1″ in your themes folder along side the other 2 that are already there.

To enable your newly installed theme you will need to go back to your Wordpress control panel, to do this go to your installation root (example.com). You’ll see the default template with a sidebar to the right which contains a section called “Meta” if you are logged in you will see a link called “Site Admin”. Click on this, once in the admin panel you’ll again be presented with the Dashboard, at the top of the Dashboard you will have a menu bar. Click the “Presentation” tab. You’ll see a list of your installed themes with preview images. Click the appropriate theme and it will automatically install that theme.To view theme go back to your blog, click “(View Site >>)” at the top of the Dashboard next to the blog name. You will see your new blog with the newly installed theme in all it’s glory!

Congratulations, you have a blog! All you need to do now is start making entries to your new blog. This is easy, go back to the Dashboard, click the “Write” tab in the menu bar at the top and it will be pretty much self explanatory from there.

If you need any more help or have anything to add to this article please let me know.

« Go back to the tutorials index.