Honestly if you are going to want to learn how to start a blog you are going to need to be prepared to learn and go out of your element just a little. It isn’t really rocket science and many people all around the world are already doing it. The fundamentals of starting a blog rely on using a paid web hosting service and actually hosting your blog there or using a free platform.
Don’t get me wrong you can host your website on a free platform such as Blogger, WordPress, Weebly, Tumblr, ect. However, there is one key disadvantage to doing this. For starters you are limited with what you can and can’t put on your blog. For instance, affiliate links, Adsense, ect. are all forbidden on a lot of the popular free platforms. Over the years they have changed it up a little bit, but for the most part you have to make sure you read the TOS (terms of service) because if you are found violating it you will be terminated. You don’t want do this!
It Pays To Pay For Web Hosting
The biggest caveat to not hosting your own blog on your own server is simply you don’t actually own the website. In fact, it is the same as having a rental car for your business except you are not paying any rental fees. Let’s take a hypothetical situation just to put this into perspective. Let’s say you have mastered how to start a blog and have created a massive following on WordPress (the free non-paid platform). Lets just say you are getting 50,000 views a day to your website and WordPress decides, “hey this fella is using all our bandwidth and doesn’t even have a paid account. Then lets say they review your blog and see various infractions. Lets just say you are blogging about something very questionable, but very popular. Your just going to have to use your imagination on that one!
The team at WordPress (just using their name as an example) is furious and just deletes your blog. Believe me they can do it for any reason they want; it’s just how it works, so don’t fight it. You get an email in your inbox and your heart skips a couple beats once your discover that you blog has been shut down. 2 years of your creative writing goes to waste and you are at square one. Imagine the feeling of not doing your blog correctly and paying the huge price for it.
Correct Way To Start A Blog
The correct way to begin a blog is to purchase web hosting a domain name. A lot of people get web hosting and domain names mixed up. The domain name is the www.yoursitename.com and the web hosting is a server in which you pay for so you can have all your files on it. You simply could not run a blog without a domain and a web hosting service.
The above situation would never have happen if you would have payed under $5 a month at WebHostingHub.com and hosted your blog on a “paid” server. You don’t have to pay anything to have WordPress installed on your blog so it just makes sense to do it the correct way. Don’t be tempted to use these free services unless you are not really serious about your blog and could live without it.
Once you sign up with WebHostingHub.com (oh did I mention you get a free domain when you sign up with them too) you are ready to begin the process of starting a blog. Don’t worry you don’t have to be a technology guru in order to operate and maintain a blog. In fact, if you can click a couple buttons you should be fine.
Using Your cPanel For Your Blog
Don’t worry the name cPanel isn’t really as fancy as it sounds. In fact, it is quite simple and it is the backbone behind all your sites hosted on a server. So in order to login to your cPanel you are going to need to go to your site examplesite.com/cpanel then simply type in your username and password. Once you have done that you can control various elements of your site. Manage your billing, web stats, creating domains, the whole nine yards.
For this tutorial we are looking for Fantastico because this is how we install WordPress (the simplest blogging platform) on our blog. Please see the video down below for installing WordPress on your blog:
You are all set and have answered the question how to start a blog, which really isn’t that hard. Your on your way to customizing it and making it something you are proud to call your blog.