How to start a WordPress blog in 2022 - The Ultimate Beginners Guide

How to start a WordPress blog? We know blogging is scary, especially if you are new to the internet. While this may be true, you don’ t need to be intimidated about installing WordPress. Regardless of your age, the procedure will be easily understood. We will provide you with a step by step guide to install WordPress and start a WordPress blog.

First, download and install WordPress at the Free WordPress Website! Understand there are two WordPress versions; WordPress.com & WordPress.org. Because they have similar names they could easily be confused. WordPress.org is a free, open source software that you can download from WordPress.org and install on your web hosting site yourself or use one of the 3 suggested providers below for installing WordPress for you. By using WordPress.org you can use any WordPress theme for your WordPress blog. WordPress.com is a for-profit company that offers its users a simpler way of installing the software. Like a good hosting provider that provides additional maintenance and security services for a price, WordPress.com takes this responsibility on itself — for a price. It’s owned by Automattic, a company founded by the co-founder of the open-source WordPress software (hence the similar names). Think of it this way, WordPress.org is self hosted WordPress and WordPress.com is hosted by WordPress.com and limits your flexibility in features you would get with a self hosted WordPress site. We recommend using WordPress.org.

One of the first steps to starting your WordPress blog is choosing a domain name. This is a critical step, because it will help you identify your brand and establish your credibility in the market. You need to be careful to choose a name that isn’t already taken, but also one that is related to your niche. You will also need to find a hosting provider that you feel comfortable with, because this is where your WordPress blog will live on the web. If you are just starting out, it can be tough to find a hosting provider that you feel comfortable with. That’s why we compiled a list of 3 of the best hosting providers for bloggers.

1. SiteGround – Siteground has been providing web hosting services since 2008. Their web hosting services focus on a new generation of web development and their hosting plans are designed to grow with your business. Siteground offers shared hosting for less than $10 per month.  Siteground is a website hosting provider that offers both shared and VPS hosting plans. They are known for their reliability and offer 24/7 support. 

Pros

• Great customer support
• Recommended by WordPress
• 1 click install WordPress
• Free automatic website backups, SSL & CDN
• Free website migration (if you currently have your site with another hosting company)

Cons

• Siteground does NOT offer a free domain
• Siteground plans have limited storage, however, if you are just starting your blog, you may not need any more than they offer.

Rating – A+

1. Ionos – IONOS is the web hosting and cloud partner for small and medium-sized businesses.. As the largest web hosting company in Europe, they manage more than 8 million customer contracts and host over 12 million domains in their own regional data centers in the US and Europe.  They offer a wide variety of services in addition to web hosting; email servers, ECommerce sites, databases, SSL, dedicated individual customer service reps, offer a wide variety of domain extensions and shared and virtual private servers.

Pros

• Managed WordPress hosting starting at only $0.50 per month for the first year
• Easy beginner WordPress setup with onboarding setup assistant & a personal free consultant
• SSL & Email accounts with your managed WordPress site
• The managed WordPress accounts have automatic PHP, theme and plug-in updates
• 99.97% server uptime, backed up daily in multiple data centers

Cons

• Plans go up after the first year to $8.00 per month
• You have to purchase many of the free features supplied after the first year

Rating – A

1. Bluehost – Bluehost has been in business based in Orem, Utah, since 2003.  They serve over 2 million websites all over the world and have 24/7 support.  They specialize in WordPress hosting and offer a basic self hosted WordPress website with 10 GB of SSD storage for $2.75 per month.  They offer sharing hosting, dedicated hosting and VPS hosting in addition to email servers and ECommerce sites.

Pros

• Their Content Creation Plan ($2.95 mo) has unlimited websites, free SSL, free domain and free email marketing
• 24/7 support
• Easy to use WordPress dashboard

Cons

• To get the introductory price you have to select a 36 month contract
• After the 36 months, the monthly rate goes to $9.99 month

About WordPress

WordPress uses a concept of roles, designed to give the WordPress blog owner (“wp admin”) the ability to control what users can and cannot do within the site. By using this method, a wp admin can manage the user access to such tasks as writing and editing new blog post, creating pages, creating categories, moderating comments, managing WordPress plugins, managing a WordPress theme, and managing other WordPress users, by assigning a specific role to each of the users.

A WordPress blog has six pre-defined roles: Super Admin, Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber. Each role is allowed to perform a set of tasks called capabilities. There are many capabilities including; publishing a blog post, moderate post comments, edit users, and install WordPress plugins. There is a default set of capabilities pre-assigned to each role, but other capabilities can be assigned or removed using the add cap() and remove cap() functions. Also, new roles can be introduced or removed using the add role() and remove role() functions.

The Super Admin role allows a user to perform all possible capabilities. Each of the other roles has a decreasing number of allowed capabilities. One particular role should not be considered to be senior to another role. Rather, consider that roles define the user’s responsibilities within the site. If you are the WordPress blog owner (Super Admin), I would not recommend giving ANYONE else this role. They could lock you out of your own blog!

Requirements for wordpress

Before installing WordPress, you need to check that your web hosting provider fulfills the necessary software and conditions. Also, you must have access to the server and some tools. Here are the requirements for your blog site using a host. PHP 7.4 or greater and MySQL 5.6 or MariaDB 10.1 or greater. If you are installing a WordPress blog on your computer or local site, then you will need an FTP account (FileZilla is a good one), the user ID and password to the server (your computer), a text editor (Google Docs is a good one to use) and the web browser of your choice.

Install wordpress

1. Download and unzip the WordPress package.
2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL (or MariaDB) user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
3. Find and rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php, then edit the file (see Editing wp-config.php) and add your database information. In case you are skeptical of tinkering with the config file, you can skip it as the install program will create the wp-config.php file for you.
4. Upload the WordPress files to the desired location on your web server:
   If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://yoursite.com), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (excluding the WordPress directory itself) into the root directory of your web server. If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your website (e.g. http://yoursite.com/blog), create the blog directory on your server and upload the contents of the unzipped WordPress package to the directory via FTP. Please Note: If your FTP client has an option to convert file names to lower case, make sure it’s disabled.
5. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing the URL in a web browser. This should be the URL where you uploaded the WordPress files. If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit: http://yoursite.com. If you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: http://yoursite.com/blog. Your finished with this portion, now move to creating a database and user.

Installing the database

If you are using a hosting plan, the database has probably already been set up for you. Go to your provider’s control panel to see if one is there. If you determine that you’ll need to create one manually, follow the instructions for Using phpMyAdmin below to create your WordPress username and database. For other tools such as Plesk, cPanel and Using the MySQL Client, refer the article Creating Database for WordPress. Make sure your database has a distinctive prefix to avoid over-writing any existing database tables. Make sure you write down the database name, database username, database password and database host name, you will need these later.

Setting up your WordPress powered website

On your browser, if you installed your blog site in the root directory, type in http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/install.php (substitute the name of your domain instead of “yoursite.com”) and hit enter. If you installed your blog site in a subdirectory, type in http://yoursite.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php (once again, substitute your domain name in the place of “yoursite” and “blog” for your subdirectory). Follow the instructions on each page to install your default WordPress theme. If you properly installed WordPress, the login prompt will be displayed. If you encounter problems or things are not working properly, go to the WordPress FAQ page or the WordPress FAQ Troubleshooting page.

Choosing WordPress Themes

Your WordPress blog uses a default WordPress theme, but WordPress offers thousands of different themes. Go to the WordPress dashboard and on the left side menu scroll down to Appearance. Hover over the word appearance and it will open a window showing the word “themes”, click on it and it will take you to a page that shows the current WordPress theme and a link to add a new WordPress theme should you not like the default WordPress theme. WordPress offers several free themes along with premium themes which you will have to pay for. By searching through the various offered themes you can find your perfect WordPress theme.

Installing WordPress plugins

Just like with WordPress themes, WordPress comes pre-loaded with a number of free plugins. To see what is already installed scroll down the left menu to below themes and you will see plugins. Hovering over it opens a menu to see installed plugins and add new plugins. The free plugins needed to run your WordPress blog is already installed. You can find WordPress plugins to help make your WordPress sites function the way you wish it to. WordPress plugins help perform different tasks for your site.

What is the difference between Pages and Posts?

WordPress uses Pages and Posts. If you go to your WordPress dashboard and scroll down the left menu you will see Posts and then further down, Pages. Pages are static, meaning they rarely change (unless you edit them) whereas Posts are dynamic, meaning they may have different content and look each time they load. Pages are used as a landing page, main page, about us page, etc. Posts deal with your blog post ideas and content.

Create your first blog post

It’s time for publishing! That’s why we created a WordPress site. It is possible to create content using the WordPress platform as a blog or website. Generally speaking posts are geared towards updating while the page is geared towards static content. Obviously the publishing experience in the latter two is very similar, so you learn the basics of writing a new article. Let us go on. Create a new article using the WordPress dashboard under the heading Posts. This opens up WordPress Editor, where you can edit a specific content. WordPress has a default editor (Gutenberg block) and it is very capable of producing a beautiful WordPress blog, However, there are some plugins that will help you design your blog with the exact layout and structure you would like. WordPress offers starter templates that will help design the perfect WordPress blog. They are Beaver Builder, Elementor and Block Editor. This plugin gives you access to 280+ pre-made full website templates and individual pages for your favorite page builder such as Elementor, Beaver Builder and the Block Editor. All you need to do is select the demo that suits your needs, import, tweak and go live! Keep in mind that these are starter templates and the full versions are paid versions. I personally use Elementor and Elementor Pro for my websites. The version that is WordPress’ free version is capable of designing your perfect WordPress blog. I use Elementor Pro because it offers more variety and features.

GREAT! You now have your first blog post done.  Happy blogging!!