Okay.. here you are…….. Just wondering how you can set up a blog for yourself just like many attractive blogs in the world wide web.
Few basics…..
You can set up your blog with any of the blog service provider or you can set it yourself under your own website name (for eg: ramkumarsblog.com )
The first option is the best if you are not familiar with jargons like domain registration, web hosting, linux server, apache, mod_rewrite………….. (relax….. need not to get tensed). The best free blog service providers as far as I know are blogger.com and wordpress.com . You can just sign up at their site and make your blog live within minutes.
Second option – set up your own blog under your domain name. I am familiar with both, but in this option I have no second choice to wordpress as a blogging software. You need to have a domain name (eg: ramkumarspeaks.com )if you havent registered one, register it with a good domain registrar such as Godaddy.com .
Once you have registered a domain name, choose a blogging software. There are many – wordpress,movable type etc. I recommend wordpress. download a recent version from wordpress.org – its free!!. Now you need a hosting account. WordPress needs linux server with PHP and MySQL so you need to consult your hosting company to confirm that they have everything for your wordpress blog. Thats it, you can start blogging.
Changing the look and feel of your blog
- Blogs hosted by wordpress.com (i.e somename.wordpress.com ) – Login to your admin panel > presentation > Themes . Here you can see many themes just by clicking it it will get activated and will be the theme of your blog.
- Self hosted blogs running on wordpress. Here when you install, you can find only 2 default themes as explained in the step 1 above. Go to themes.wordpress.net , you can choose a beautiful theme for yourself. You need to download the theme from there, which will be zipped. You need to extract the files and the whole folder of the new theme, you need to upload at /wp-content/themes/ folder of your blog. Now, presentation > Themes will show up the new theme you just uploaded. Clicking on the theme snapshot, it will be activated. Thats it !! Pretty simple isn’t it?