Blog for Writers: How to Start a Blog, a Guide for Writers

How to start a blog, A guide for writers

Every writer needs a platform to share thoughts and experiences to the general public. The cheapest and the reliable means to do this is to start a blog. The online platform is one platform that is exposed to thousands of visitors worldwide.

Start a blog
Start a blog, A guide for writers

Before creating your blog, you have to first decide what you are writing on. Then you are good to go. But there are few steps you have to considered  when doing this.  give the blog you about to create a name and register it. After registering the domain name, consider hosting the blog with an appropriate hosting plan and install. Down here is a guide on how to create a blog.

Deciding the Domain Name  when you start a blog

When you are deciding the domain name to use for your blog, it is pertinent to sit down and quietly think on many ideas as it comes. Chose a name that is related to the niche you are blogging on. For instance, Your desire niche is freelancing under Ghostwriting, you can chose a name like naij.com or infowaka.com Think extensively and come out with something different.

Is this difficult?

then try using a synonym tool that can generate another name from the named you had earlier. Remember that a good domain name will help you to rank very well.

 

Claiming your domain name

After deciding on the name of your domain, go ahead and claim it by purchasing the domain name. If you are in Nigeria, you can choose to purchase the domain from our own man Ugohost.com or you can get it with from the popular Bluehost. This domain company offers a free domain name for new websites.

Check out domains with Bluehost here

Bluehost may not be interesting, but alternatively you can register the blog’s name manually with just 10 dollars only.  It is advisable that you chose a .com domain name. in case  you are focusing  a particular geographical entity like U.K or Nigeria, then you can think of using .com.ng or .ng or .co.uk. Example ghostwriters.ng. If any of the above option is taken, then think of rename the domain.

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 Choosing a blogging platform

The next thing to consider is choosing a blogging platform. The most renowned platform to use is WordPress. This platform is used by more than 78 million people and has been proven to be the best blogging platform.

Did you that ?

One good thing about wordpress is that  it is a free blogging platform with best support, themes, templates and easy to customize .

How about Blogger and  Tumblr?

If you are not convenient with wordpress or you feel it is costly, you could explore Blogger or Tumblr. The duo are easy to use and look cheaper because you don’t have to purchase any hosting or a domain name.

Sometimes good things are usually not effective. With Blogger or Tublr, your domain will look like http://domainname.tumblr.com or http://domainname.bogspot.com.  This looks so amateur.

These hosting plans are not effective as wordpress and they generates low traffic especially organic traffic. I recommend that you use wordpress when you wants to start a blog. In case you did not know, your site is controlled by them and they can choose to do whatever with your website.  However, if you not convenient with WP you can start a blog Tumblr or Blogger to learn blogging, but a more professional site will avoid using them.

 Setting up your web hosting

If you have chosen to host under WP, the next step is to set up a web host. Your  web host is a space where you can upload and store the contents of your website. Setting up a web host is simple and straight forward- just move to your host example Bluehost and create an account with them.

I love Bluehost. Do you know why?

Bluehost is relatively cheap and cost about 4.95 dollar per month. That’s so cheap and the maximum you have to spend except you are buying a premium theme.  After creating the hosting account,  It will take you only one click to install the host function.

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Setting up WordPress

Using Bluehost to set up a wordpress is extremely easy and reliable compare to other host. When setting up a wordpress. With Bluehost, you don’t have to be disturbed about setting up your database and effecting changes on your site’s code.

When you logged  in to your dashboard, click on the install wordpress button and get the software installed on your blog.

Once this is done, visit www.yourdomainname.com(.ng/.org/.uketc)/wp-admin and login straight to your dashboard.

Congratulations!

You can start designing your site and create unique contents.

Designing your Sites 

  1. Choose a good theme

After completing the above steps, It is no longer difficult. Can you see why I congratulated you?  It is now time to get a good WordPress theme to make your website beautiful and attractive. Your site will be smart and your content will display well whether you are accessing it on PC, tablets or phones. There are lots of premium themes which you can get for your site at about $40 or £25.

Of course there are lots of free themes available for WP but these can’t stand the beat of the ones purchased.

Premium themes like Genesis, thesis, Elegant themes etc are renowned and mostly used by bloggers.Themes come with unlimited support  and essential when you’re just starting a blog.

  1. Create an header

With canva, your favourite graphic designer can create a good header for your site. An header changes the look of your blog and makes it more professional.

My favorite option? Order one on Fiverr. I’ve had great luck getting headers and other graphics designed in this online marketplace, where thousands of people offer their services for $5 per gig.

 

Installing useful plugins when you start a blog

Now that we have a slick looking blog, there’s only one thing left that we need to do before we’re ready to hit the ground running and begin blogging; install a handful of great plugins. This step is not essential, but it will help you in the long run.

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Plugins are little add-ons that give you extra functionality in WordPress without having to do any coding. Here are a handful of great plugins I’d recommend installing to give you a head start. All of the plugins recommended below are free of charge to download and use.

  1. WordPress SEO

This is one of the greatest WordPress plugins in my opinion. While WordPress is pretty good for SEO (search engine optimisation) straight out of the box, there are a few flaws. WordPress SEO picks up on these flaws and ensures your website is set up in a way that maximises your ability to rank high in search engines and generate search traffic.

 2.WP Total Cache

This cacheing plugin is great for speeding up WordPress. By compressing your pages and saving cached versions of pages, you can cut down your page load time by a significant margin. This is good practice for ensuring a good user experience, and it also helps with your search rankings.

3. WP Login Lockdown

Unfortunately, i’ve had a few of my sites hacked in the past, and it’s because I hadn’t taken enough measures to secure them. Login Lockdown is a great plugin that ensures if anyone tries to login to your website and gets the password wrong three times, they’re locked out for a certain amount of time. This is handy for preventing brute-force bots that try thousands of different password combinations to get into your website.

4. WP Backup

Similarly to above, if the worst ever did happen it’d suck to lose all of your blog posts. That’s where WP Backup comes in – this plugin automatically saves all of your posts, comments, pages, and design changes to either Google Drive or Dropbox once per day, week, month, or year, depending on what interval you choose.

 

There are are other useful plugins to download and install in your site.

 

About Peters Edi 3459 Articles
My business is feeding a market that is desperate for the solutions that I create to solve their challenges. Here is a bit about me: Peters Edi is a prolific writer who writes awesome contents especially for the internet; he is a freelance writer, SEO expert, web designer, a Blogger, event host, and ICT/Social Media consultant......

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