How to start a Blog – Totally Beginner’s Guide

Posted On January 29, 2021

You decided to start a blog and you answered your question on why do you want to start a blog. The next question is how?

There’s a lot of information in the web with different things being told. What do you do ? What Steps are you going to do? Where’s do you start ?
With all these confusing information , might as well stop!
It’s right to stop and read this Blog but do continue to start your own Blog.
We all have to start somewhere, I had the same problems and to be perfectly honest I’m still learning.

Like everything in life, everything is about learning. Just like you , I’ve thought about Blogging a few year ago and started and stopped.
Ursal.org was revised several times when I started blogging up to the present version of this website.

The Pandemic, having stayed at home more than what We’ve used to made me realize to continue this journey with Blogging.
I was able to continue this blogging journey this time because of the following steps that I’ve undertaken.

Blogging has become one of the most popular ways of communicating and spreading information and news. There are a lot of blogs online but there will always be a spot for everyone to get noticed!

Disclosure: This guide contains some affiliate links. If you purchase any service through one of these links I may earn a small commission, this is at no extra cost to you.

How Start a Blog in 7 easy steps:
There are seven main steps you need to do to get your blog up and running. Follow this guide and you will have your very own blog set-up in no time a all.

1. Decide the blogging platform you will use   
2. Decide if you want to use your domain or use free blogging
3. Choose a domain name for your blog (If you want to use your own domain)
4. Choose a web host for your blog
5. Set up a blog on your own domain
6. Design your new blog
7. Useful resources for blogging

Step 1 – Decide the blogging platform you will use

The first decision you have to do is choose where you want to build your blog. I will make a wild guess and assume that you’ve heard of WordPress. This is the platform I use and It has massive usage. It’s one of the biggest blogging platforms in the world, with massive plugins and add-ons both paid and free.

There are almost infinite ways to layout and design your blog.
WordPress is world’s most popular and widely used content management system now powers 39.5% of all websites on the internet.
There are other alternatives such as Blogger , squarespace, weebly and others.

Using WordPress or other alternative Content management system will make your life easier and will only need to worry about wring your blog.
And honestly, the reason that I’ve stopped blogging before was when I’m not using a blogging tool and had to worry about coding and using HTML tools and other technical knowhow.

Aside from WordPress being the most popular and I believe is better than any other alternatives. Here are additional reasons why I’ve chosen WordPress as my blogging platform.

• Free to use and Super duper easy to set-up
• Tons of free layouts or themes
• Because of massive usage, there’s a lot support forum in case you get stuck and need help.
• You will have have professional looking Blog with a lot of  Functionalities and forms
• Tons of free Plugins which will be add more functions to your Blog.
• Easy interaction with your readers, people can interact with you easily.
• Your content can easily be shared and commented on.

Step 2 – Decide if you want to use your domain or use free blogging

The next decision before you go any further is to choose if you are going to self host your blog or use the free alternative. You need to decide if you are going to pay for your blog or grab a free one.

WordPress and Blogger both offer free blogs for anyone. That’s great ! Sign me up, free! Oh Yeah! Oh Yeah! Wait!
The Free alternative is perfect for those who are not yet serious about blogging. But it does have disadvantages and downsides:

• you don’t have your OWN Domain name, free blog’s URL will have the site name like <yourblog>.wordpress.com or <yourblog>.blogspot.com
• There are some limits to free blogs alternative, you don’t have te possibility to upload all images and videos you want. You are limited to what themes you can use
• you can’t fully monetize your blog.
• The ownership of the blog is not truly yours, since the blog is hosted on someone else’s web property the control is not really yours.

Self-hosted blog on the other hand is owned by you, you are the REAL owner of your blog. You can name your blog whatever you want like ursal.org, travelabz.com, recipeforus.com or <others>.com. You can end your blog with .com, .org, .net , country specific like .au, .ph or virtually any other web suffix. Add to that the bandwidth for videos, images, and contents which you wouldn’t have on a free blogs.

how much is hosting and a domain name? Fortunately, It’ not as much as you’re thinking. It usually works out to about $5 to $10 per month, depending on your hosting provider you will be using.
If you’ve been on this site, you will know that I’ve been using bluehost as my hosting provider.

You can also register your domain for $4.99* .COM Domains! with GoDaddy!

Step 3 – Choose a domain name for your blog (If you want to use your own domain)

If you’ve decided to use your own domain, it’s time to choose a name for your website. Make sure to name your site with niche or topic that you will be blogging about. Here are some points to remember when choosing a name.

• Keep your domain name short
• choose a name that easy to pronounce and spell
• keep it unique
• avoid hypens
• use .com as much as possible, but if the domain name you like is available in .net or .org and not .com, It’s better to have it on those other suffixes
• research your domain name

Some popular domain registrars are domain.com, godaddy.com.
If you are just starting and looking at bluehost for your hosting, you can also use bluehost to register your domain name.
You check below if your domain name is available

Step 4 – Choose a web host for your blog

Disclosure: I recommend using Bluehost for web hosting. If you click through one of my links and make a purchase, I will receive a commission, which helps me keep ursal.org up and running.

Personally, I use Bluehost (for my blog domain and hosting), and I’ve got nothing but good things to say about it.
Bluehost is one of the cheapest hosting providers out there. $3.95/month and Free domain name for the first year. Bluehost also has a 1 Click WordPress install. Bluehost is the provider that I use for all of my blogs, including the one you’re reading right now.

If for any reason you don’t want to go with Bluehost, feel free to choose other hosting company like Hostgator.

Step 5 & 6 – Set up a blog on your own domain and design your new Blog

After you set-up your web hosting, time to log on and install WordPress or the other blogging platform that you’ve decided to use.
As I’ve mentioned I’ve only used wordpress and hence can only write about WordPress. WordPress has default Theme (this is the overall design of your blog or site) but you can install other free Themes. You can google

“free wordpress theme <subject> ”

and it will result with these themes. The Theme sites have information and some demo on how their theme would look.
Choose the theme that you think looks best for your blog.

Step 7 – Useful resources for blogging

Information here might be a lot, but I believe if you set your mind to it you can do it. Going to Worpress set-up and writing your own blog might be daunting but If you start doing it , you will figure it out and before you know it you will be writing, updating, using themes, using plugins before you know it

And if you go by using WordPress, there are lot of Useful resources for blogging using wordpress available on the web.

On my next Post, I will write down the resources and talk about how they helped me on this blogging quest.

These steps might be a lot but I highly suggest to do the blogging yourselves, It’s something to learn and get busy with while we are still dealing with Covid-19 but you can also hire others to do your blog for you. You have to do your research and due diligence when hiring people. One service or site you can use is Fiverr.

There’s also paid WordPress Online Support but again as I’ve said, try doing it by yourself and you would be surprise on what you can do.

Take not as well that There is difference between Worpress.com and WordPress.org.