More from Your Blog

RESOURCES FOR BLOGGERS

  • Bloglovin
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • CHOOSE YOUR BLOGGING LEVEL
    • I DON’T HAVE A BLOG YET
    • I AM A NEW BLOGGER
    • BLOGGING IS MY BUSINESS
  • HOW TO START A WORDPRESS BLOG
  • BLOGGING TOOLS
  • OUR MAIN BLOG — KATIE DID WHAT
  • READ THE OLD BLOG

Setting up Your Blog?

Take a look at the posts below, which contain tips and advice for setting up your blog.

How to Start a Blog

11 Comments

how to start a wordpress blog

There are many reasons why you might want to know how to start a blog. Maybe you have a business and want to supplement your online activity with a blog. Good idea! Maybe you want to start an online diary of your life. That’s fun too! Maybe you want to start a fashion blog, or a food blog, or a fitness blog. There are so many types of blogs out there to start! The key is starting. You have all of these ideas, so get going on them!

If you know anyone who is thinking of starting a blog, or who you think should, please pass this post on to them so they can get it done quickly and easily!

This post will serve as a step-by-step guide to show you how to start a blog in under 20 minutes. If you follow along with the post while creating your blog, you should have a new blog up and running in no time!

I will state upfront why I recommend HostGator. For starters, HostGator guarantees 99.99% uptime for your site. WordPress recommends only 3 hosting companies for running their platform – HostGator is #1. A+ customer service available 24/7/365. Another reason is that their pricing is amazingly good. (Save 25% more with code MOREFROMYOURBLOG) Lastly, as you are about to find out, the set-up from the ground up is very easy.
It is important that you know that I am a HostGator affiliate. Therefore, while it costs you NOTHING EXTRA, I get a little something when I refer people to HostGator. None of that changes anything. They are a great company, affiliate program or not. The truth is, I could become an affiliate of just about any of the hundreds of hosting companies out there, but I choose to recommend HostGator.

Ok, so How do you Start a Blog?

1. Do some brainstorming
What are you going to write about? What do you want your blog’s name to convey? Do some research as to the availability of domain names. Chances are, the first couple you try will already be taken. You can check the availability of domain names right here. Once you find a domain that is available, you’ll be at this screen:
domain availableDon’t register your domain on this screen, it will be easier to do it the way I describe below.

Once you’ve found a domain name that is available, think long and hard about it and make sure that it is the one you want. That will be something that you’re never going to want to change.

2. Get some cheap hosting
Now that you know of a domain that you like and is still available, it’s time to get some cheap web hosting to go with it.
how to start a new blog
You’re going to want to head over here, where you can sign up for HostGator and score awesome hosting for as low as $3.96/month! Save 25% more with coupon code MOREFROMYOURBLOG as well! To start, I recommend the baby plan. You can upgrade ANYTIME.

Choose a plan and you’ll be at this screen:
domain success
Upon entering your domain, you will see that it is available and it will be automatically added to your cart.

You will then be given the option to add other top-level domains to your cart such as the .net and .org versions of your domain. If you’re really worried about someone trying to snap those names up, go ahead and add them to your cart, although this can get pricey. I generally do not do this and only buy the .com domain.

Scroll down a bit to see this screen:
optionsHere, you’ll be able to select which plan is for you and how long you want to sign up for. I recommend the baby plan, because you are able to add more than one domain to the hosting plan. The price difference is so small and most bloggers are likely to add another domain. I also recommend signing up for as long as possible, as you will save money doing so. That said, the nice part about HostGator is that you can sign up for just one month at a time if you want.

So, select your hosting package and billing cycle length and then create an account username and password.

Scroll down and enter your billing info. Their site is 100% secure.

Note: if at any point during this process you get stuck, feel free to contact me (info at the bottom of post) or jump on the phone and call HostGator at 1-866-96-GATOR and they’ll be happy to help you out.

Scroll down a bit more for some extra options. The screen will look like this:
extrasThey’ll auto-check a few of these, so make sure you un-check them.

Here’s a breakdown of what these extras are:
Domain Privacy Protection – this is a big deal. If you don’t choose this, anyone can look up who owns your site and your registration information will be public. This includes your email address, physical address and phone number. You want domain privacy protection.

Secure and Accelerate Your Site – WordPress does this quite well as it is. So does HostGator. You don’t need this extra.

Site Backups: Daily Backups of Your Site to the Cloud – you want to do this, but you just don’t have to pay for it. WordPress offers a variety of automatic backup plugins including BackWPup, Backup and WPB2D.

Increase Your Search Engine Visibility with SEO Gears – This is not necessary. Follow SEO best practices that I cover on this site and you’ll do just as well.

The next section will have you enter a coupon code. Enter MOREFROMYOURBLOG to save 25% on your order!

Underneath of that, you’ll be able to review your order. It will look something like this:
totalCheck the box that you agree to their terms and move forward.

Once payment is complete, you’ll receive an email within a few minutes confirming your purchase and containing important information. I recommend forwarding this email to another email address that you own so it is in two places just in case.

In the email will be a link to your control panel aka cpanel. You’re going to want to click that. You’ll have to login. The login and password will be in the email as well.

Now that you’re passed that screen, you should get to your cPanel. This is the “back end” of your site and where all of the key technical matters will take place.

In the cpanel, you’ll see a LOT of icons. Ignore them all for now. You don’t want to spend a lot of time here unless you really know what you are doing. What we will do here is install WordPress. With HostGator, it is actually very easy to install WordPress on a domain. In your cPanel, scroll down and look for a “Software/Services” section. It’ll look like this:
quickinstall
Click QuickInstall to move forward.

install wordpress

Next, you’ll be at the WordPress install screen.

Choose WordPress on the left under “Popular Installs” and click “Install WordPress” on the right to move forward.

installing

  1. The Base Domain for your installation.
  2. The sub directory you would like the site to load from, if desired. You probably want to leave this blank.
    Example: Should you wish your WordPress URL to be mydomain.com/site instead of just mydomain.com, you would enter “site” in the box.
  3. For Admin Email, enter an email address where you want the admin password emailed to. Make sure this is a working email address that yo have access to.
  4. For Blog Title, enter the name of the website. This is what will appear in the header as the name of your site. You can change this later if you want.
  5. For Admin Username, enter your preferred user name. Do not use “admin”, as it is easier to hack accounts with the username “admin”.
  6. Your first name.
  7. Your last name.
  8. Click Install WordPress when you’re ready to proceed

A progress bar at the top of the page will let you know when installation is complete. Once complete, you will be able to start working on your WordPress site. Check your email for your WordPress username and password as well as a link to your WordPress dashboard.

You may also find your credentials by clicking View Credentials in the bar at the top fo the page:
done

Bookmark that url, it will be the page you go to when you need to login to your WordPress dashboard. Login to your WordPress and you’re good to go!
new blogYou’ll see a screen that looks like the one above. That is your WordPress dashboard. Hold your mouse over the “Posts” option and a new dropdown menu will appear. Click New Post and you’re off and running! To delete the original post that they put there, click all posts and you’ll see an option to trash that “Hello World” post.

Aaaaaaand that is how to start a blog that is self-hosted on WordPress.

Whew! We made it! Was is easy? Do you have questions? Leave a comment below, email me zack@morefromyourblog.com or catch me on Twitter @RealZackReyes. I’m happy to walk you through this process!

Now that you’re in WordPress, you’ll want to browse around the available themes and choose one that works for you. There are free themes and premium themes. I recommend jumping right in with a premium theme. It’s easy to use the freebies, but the premium themes are so much more functional, user friendly and SEO friendly that you don’t want to ignore them. First and foremost, I recommend a Genesis theme (this site runs on a Genesis theme) because of the functionality, moderate price and ease of use. Thesis is also a good premium theme with a lot of functionality.

Depending on how comfortable you are with HTML and CSS code, you will be able to customize your site on your own. If you are having trouble with handling the design yourself, it may be time to hire a designer. Try to get someone that you know, or that someone you know has worked with. Having a good, trusting designer is important, so don’t take it lightly. I recommend Laura at Pixel Me Designs. She has worked on several of our sites. Tell her I sent you! 😀

Rest assured, the hard part is out of the way. Now, it’s up to you to start providing great content, driving people to your blog and making the most out of your new venture!

Filed Under: Blog, Setting up Your Blog, Tutorials

How to Make a Blog Header

Leave a Comment

how to make a blog header



I wrote about how to make a blog header a while back and thought I’d polish the post a bit and make it more 2014 friendly.

No matter where you are in your blogging life, your blog’s header is of the utmost importance. If you’ve already got a header, I challenge you to take a look at it with an editorial eye Is it optimized for mobile? Does it accomplish what you want it to for new site visitors?

My favorite part from my previous post about headers was the basic tips that I led off with.

Tips on creating a website or blog header:
• keep it clean
• minimal pictures
• make sure it fits
• don’t make it too tall
• make it look professional
• don’t make it look cheap

As I mentioned above, the header is a very important part of your blog. It’s basically like the job interviews outfit you pick out: it’ll be people’s first visual impression of you, so you want to make it good.

If you’re not creative, or are not good with graphic design, hire someone to do it. There are designers throughout blogland who do a great job for $20-$50. Even better, you can check out Fiverr to find hundreds of people who will create you a header for $5! You can see their work and any feedback they have before ordering. Do your research there, find a good one and you’ll land a great header for $5!

I’ve gotten some great design work done through fiverr and can’t believe I only paid $5 for it once it’s done! It’s definitely worth a shot.

If you decide to make a blog header yourself, here’s an easy way to do it:

1. Assuming you’re in WordPress and have a header function, simply hover over “appearance” in you dashboard and click “header”. Your header’s dimensions will be listed on the next screen. In Blogger, the easiest way to find your header’s dimensions is to visit your blog and save your current header as an image on your computer. Then open the image with a photo editing program (I use Paint) and look at the dimensions.

2. Create a blank jpeg file of your exact header dimensions. Note: if you want to change the size of your header, you’ll need limited php knowledge.

3. Go to PicMonkey and open the blank file that you created.

4. From there, you’re on your own as far as creating the header. Use the tips above, familiarize yourself with the tools that PicMonkey has to offer and play around with it until you come up with something you like. Note: now would be a good time to “spring” for the paid subscription (something like $3/month) so you can use the premium fonts and graphics. Don’t skimp on your header!

5. Once you have a header created, it’s time to upload it. WordPress users will simply upload it under the “header” section and you’re good to go. In Blogger, head to the layout section of your dashboard and click edit in the header scetion. (see below)
blogger header

6. If you have an existing header image, click “remove image” and you’ll see an option to upload your new header.

7. Find the file on your computer and upload it.

8. For “placement” choose “Instead of title and description” if all you want to show in your header is your image (this is usually the case).

9. Check your blog!

That should be it! The tough part about this whole process is coming up with a header that you are happy with.

Again, get creative and keep it clean! Find out what works for you. Look around at other blog’s headers and get inspiration. Don’t copy though. Experiment with real images and text, graphics and text, or text only. Shift things around and ask the opinions of others. This is a very serious task in terms of setting up your blog, so give it the time (or investment) needed to produce a nice-looking header.

Filed Under: Blog, General Blogging Tips, Setting up Your Blog

10 Best Plugins for WordPress

5 Comments

best plugins for wordpress


In this post, I will list and explain what I consider to be the 10 best plugins for WordPress. Plugins can be a true life-saver on a WordPress site, but some can be more of a pain than a benefit. This list will cover the best of what WordPress has to offer with regard to plugins.

This list is for WordPress.org sites. If you are running a Blogger or WordPress.com site, this post isn’t for you. Unless you want to create your own self-hosted WordPress site.

10 Best Plugins for WordPress

Akismet – WordPress’ anti-spam plugin that now comes standard with a WordPress installation. There is no better spam filter for WordPress, so set up your API key and get Akismet going first thing.

Yoast – Great plugin to help keep your SEO on track. See this video for how to use it to help your on-page SEO. With Yoast, you can also manage your sitemaps, permalinks and other key SEO information without having to dig deep into code.

Comment Reply Notification – This will make a little box (which you can choose to be auto-checked or not) right under the submit comment button that will allow commenters to be notified via email when a reply to their comment has been made. This is great for interaction, which is not something you want to discourage.

Flare – The social sharing plugin that you see on this site is Flare. Some say it is resource heavy, but I have never had any issues, so it gets my recommendation. You can set it to have a floating share-bar on the left or right side of the page in addition to social share icons at the top or bottom of the posts.

Online Backup for WordPress – allows you to easily backup your entire WordPress site and database. You can set up an online backup database in the cloud, or can download the backups straight to your computer. Either way, make sure to download this plugin and backup your site often! As a matter of fact…

Ok, where was I… oh ya, plugins. Here’s the rest of the list:

W3 Total Cache – An all-in-one caching plugin that will make your site run faster. There is tons of stuff that you could delve into with W3 but if you just install it and keep it up and running, it will do all that you need. For a more in-depth look at W3 Total Cache, see this great post.

Nrelate Related Content – This will create a “You may also like” feature at the end of your posts where you can direct readers to related posts. You can choose how many posts to show, what size image thumbnail to show and other options. Again, this plugin saves you an ungodly amount of coding that would be required to get the same feature.

WP Touch – This plugin will give you an easy, basic mobile friendly site. Upgrade to the WP Touch Pro version to get more customization options, functionality and the ability to put ads on your mobile site.

PC Hide Pages – quickly and easily hide pages from search engines. An example of when this is useful is on this site. I do consultations and have working pages built just for each client. I don’t want those pages to be indexed by Google and potentially found by random people.

Wordfence Security – includes a complete firewall, scans for DNS changes, blocks brute force attacks and more. You can also see and block the IP of any visitor to your site. Basically, this plugin is like your site’s bodyguard.

Bonus Plugins – for Genesis Theme Users

Simple Social Icons – Quickly place simple, good looking social icons on your Genesis site. Change the color, hover color, roundness and size without getting into html code.
Simple Hooks – Will allow you to do things with functions without having to touch functions.php files. Easily place Analytics code or other scripts without the need of an expert.

So there you have it! With any plugin, make sure you check the reviews. If there are not recent reviews, or the plugin has low reviews, move along. Again, I use every single one of the plugins above and can vouch for their safety and usefulness.

Filed Under: Blog, General Blogging Tips, Setting up Your Blog

How to Set Up Your RSS Feed in Blogger or WordPress

5 Comments

This post will show you how to quickly and easily set up an RSS feed in Blogger, WordPress or any other blogging platform. I will also go over how to optimize your feed and talk a little bit about why RSS feeds are important.

First, I’ll go over what an RSS feed is and why you should care about your site’s RSS feed.
An RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed is a way of viewing blog posts in an easy way. Subscribers can view all of their RSS feed subscriptions in one place, which many find easier than going from site to site. Even though Google Reader just got shut down, a lot of people still use feed readers to catch up on their blog reading. Feedly, Pulse, Yahoo Lines and The Old Reader are just a few of the available options for feed readers.

As a blogger, you want to optimize your feed and make sure they are seeing what you want.

In Blogger, there are some basic settings that you can change as far as your feed goes, but I’m not even going to discuss them.

In my opinion, the easiest way to handle your RSS feed is to go to Feedburner.com and create a feed for your blog. It’s super easy and they will walk you through the steps. Once you have your feed created, you can grab the URL for your feed and link to that on your blog.
feedburner setup
When someone clicks the link, they will get to your feed with this box in the upper right corner:
feedburnerThere, they can subscribe to your Feedburner feed, or choose to get updates via email.

There’s not much to running your feed. Whenever you publish a new blog post, it will automatically appear in your feed. It’s all smooth sailing once you set it up!

You can make a text link for your feed, or use an image and make that a link. If you want to use an image, you can use the tutorial found here. Just replace the social media icon with whatever icon/image you want to use for your feed.

Feedburner is the easiest way to handle your RSS feed as a blogger. Try it out today! Feedburner does strip the sidebars of the site, so if you want to have ads show up, you’ll have to put the code somewhere in your post.

As I said, the easiest way to get a decent feed is through Feedburner. The Blogger settings just confuse the entire process. Make it easy and just use Feedburner. Good luck!

Filed Under: Blog, Setting up Your Blog

No Reply Blogger — How to Fix This!

44 Comments

how not to be a no reply blogger


Are you a no-reply blogger? Would you know if you are?


First, really quickly, let’s talk about why you probably want to be a reply blogger. If you leave comments on other blogs and would like to know if the blog author has responded to your comment without having to go back to their blog, you should become a reply blogger.

There’s an easy way to test to see if you are a no-reply blogger. While logged into your Blogger account, go to any old post on your blog and leave a comment (you’ll delete it after the test). Now head to the email that you get comment notifications sent to. Find your comment notification and look for the sender address. In Gmail, it will look like this:
no reply blogger
You will see the return address as “noreply@blogger.com” of you are in fact a no-reply blogger.

Update: this fix will only work if you have disconnected your Blogger profile form your Google+ profile. You can reconnect after you perform the fix below. Here’s how to disconnect:
Head to your Blogger dashboard and in the upper right corner just under your name, you will see a gear icon. Click that and there will be an option to disconnect your Blogger account from your Google + account. Do that, then the link in this post should work find.

To reconnect, go back to the gear icon and click “connect to Google+” and you’ll be good to go!

Here’s how to fix it:
Go to your edit profile page (click here to get there quickly) and click the checkbox that says “show my email address:
no reply offTo change the email address that the comment replies go to, use the box in that same “Edit Profile” screen that you’re in.

If you don’t have a blog, you can simply go to your profile and see if the “show my email address” box is checked. If it’s not, make sure your correct email address is entered and check it.

That’s it!

I will also mention that you might want to double check your settings, because if you synced your Blogger profile to Google+, it may have changed your settings back to no reply status.

Filed Under: Blog, General Blogging Tips, Setting up Your Blog

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Next Page »

Disclosure Policy

As of December 2009, the FTC requires all Blogs generating any source of income to have an official … Read More

  • Bloglovin
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Popular on KatieDidWhat.com

---> Registry Must Haves
---> How to Start a Lifestyle Blog
---> What's in My Hospital Bag

How to Start a WordPress Blog

There are many reasons why you might want to know how to start a blog. Maybe you have a business and want to supplement your online activity with a blog. Good idea! Maybe you want to start an online diary of your life. That's fun too! Maybe you want to start a fashion blog, or a … Read More

Copyright 2016 More from Your Blog | Start a Blog Today! | Enterprise Pro theme running on Genesis