I just realized something. How in the world can you start blogging if you don’t have a blog to post to.  And that is why I have decided to include this tutorial in the ongoing series – Beginner Blogger. And just an FYI, this is an excerpt from a book I am working on.

Installing WordPress and Initial Setup of Your Blog

We always recommend hosting your own WordPress blog or website on your own domain, rather than signing up for an account at WordPress.com.  The reasons are pretty simple too:

1. You are better off having your own domain name for your business.  Not the least of which, your own domain will get you the best results in local searches for your business.
2. You have complete control over your site, both the look and function.  In other words, you can make the site your own.
3. Because you have complete control, you can make your site look like a website and not just a blog. (Which we will show you in the near future).
4. Having your own domain and hosting it on your own hosting account will get you the best SEO results too.  If you use a WordPress.com site, even if you map your domain to the WordPress.com domain, you are still a sub-domain and you are not taking full advantage of the SEO.
5. It is easy to set up and get started with a WordPress site hosted on your own hosting account

You can get a free blog from WordPress.com, and a lot of people do. But don’t!  If you are serious about using a website or blog to market and promote you business, then get serious about your site.  You want a hosted WordPress site.

Getting a hosted WordPress installation

You can struggle with installing your own version of WordPress on any host that supports PHP and MySQL.  WordPress can be downloaded free here.

However, I strongly suggest you use a hosting provider which permits and supports 1-click installs of WordPress.  Taking advantage of this type of service will allow you not to worry about downloading WordPress, uploading it to your host, creating the database and editing the configuration files.  Something I don’t even want to mess around with.  Besides, “I have people” to handle all of that for me.

For the small business, HostGator is a great way to go for WordPress hosting.  They have plans starting as low as $4.95/month for hosting, and provide some great features that fit right in with the type of sites we will be discussing.

Installing WordPress in under 7 minutes

1. Log into your Hostgator cPanel (control panel)
2. Scroll down until you’re near the bottom of the pagre
3. Locate the section entitled “Software/Services.”
4. Click on the Fantastico icon. Its the one with the blue smiley face.
5. On the Fantasico page, click the “WordPress” text link on the left sidebar.
6. Click on “New Installation.”
7. Choose which domain you want this WordPress install to be on.  If you have an individual site hosting plan, this will default to your one domain. If you have a shared hosting plan, choose which domain you want this WordPress install to be on.
8. In the section that says, “Admin access data,” you will put the login name and password you want to use to log into your WordPress Dashboard.
9. Fill in the “Base Configuration” fields with the name you want to be associated with all the posts you write in your new blog.  Also, add in your email address and the website’s domain name for your new site.
10. Click “Install WordPress.”
11. You will be given the domain information, to make sure it is being installed on the correct domain.  If it looks good, click “Finish Installation.”
12. You are done.  You have just installed WordPress on your new website.  Make a note of your login information and/or print on the information on your screen so you have it for future reference.

Logging into your WordPress Admin

Now that you have installed WordPress for your site, you will want to login to the Dashboard.  Type the URL (http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin) into your browser and put in your login when you see the login screen.

There are going to be a few things you are going to want to do to get your site ready to go.  All of these settings you will make after you have WordPress installed on your host.

I have marked the three areas above you will want to change as soon as you can.  You will want to change these in the General Settings panel which can be found under Settings on the left side of your Dashboard.  Change the field labeled Tagline, E-mail address and Timezone.

Next, we want to make some adjustments to the “Permalinks Structure” of your site.  You do this by choosing Permalinks on the left hand menu also.  Set your permalinks structure to look like the screenshot we have provided below.

Making this change to your permalinks makes your URL of your website pages more search engine friendly.  The URL to your pages will look like: http://www.yourdomain.com/sample-post instead of http://ww.yourdomain.com/?p=123