How to Start a Blog — A Step by Step Beginner’s Guide

Here are some ideas for blog topics:

Lifestyle blog. You can write about a particular type of lifestyle. People love finding other people that live the way they like to live. People live vicariously through others, so no matter what type of lifestyle you pick, you’ll garner an audience by sharing stuff about it through your blog.

Entertainment blog. You can blog about popular culture. Movies, music, theatre and other forms of arts can be topics to blog about that will be successful. If you narrow it down a bit, you can do a blog about movie reviews, celebrity news, latest television shows. These topics have always been popular and will continue to be popular in 2015 and beyond.

Religion blog. Blogs about religion are sprouting up everywhere because people feel strongly about their faith. There’s almost an endless supply of things you can talk about with a religion blog. You can talk about one specific religion, you can talk about all the faiths of the world, traditions, practices, people.

Personal blog. This can be a fairly easy blog to start because it really is about you. You are an expert about you, right? You can talk about your personal journey through life. You can share your views, opinions and thoughts on almost anything you want by doing a personal blog. You will find that sharing personal stories can help a lot of people that could be struggling with things you have already figured out.

Political blog. If you are into politics, this is another popular topic that you could write about. This is a topic that should never run out of ideas because you can cover political topics at so many levels, financial, global, national, cultural, the ideas never end and politics are always changing. If you like this kind of thing, this can be the best blog topic to cover when you start.

Foodie blog. If you love food and want to share your culinary adventures with the world, this might be perfect for you. It doesn’t matter if you cook or just enjoy eating, people love looking at photos of great food and hearing about different dishes, recipes, kitchen gadgets and the latest hip restaurant.

Fashion blog. – If you are into fashion trends, then this might be the blog for you. You can cover seasonal lookbooks, the latest trends in outfits, shoes, accessories and more. People always want to see what people are wearing and if this is something you’re passionate about then you should give it a try.

A few other types of blogs are also popular and could be perfect for you: Health and wellness, fitness, financial and the Do It Yourself (DIY) type of blogs. These are informative type of blogs and they attract a great audience.

Option one, using the one-click installation program.

The one-click installation is a system offered by many web hosts. It allows you to quickly get WordPress installed without any technical knowledge or expertise.

You simply find the one-click install program in your web host account dashboard, fill in the details for your blog and then let the web host install the blog for you.

The result is that you get a link to your blog’s administration page, a username and a password. Then when you login, you are ready to start using your blog. It is very easy to use this and get started quickly.

But if you want to learn a little more about how your blog works and the different components that make WordPress work, then the manual installation is recommended.

Option two, installing WordPress by hand.

Installing WordPress by hand is relatively simple, but you need to follow the steps carefully. WordPress.org offers the installation steps as a simple five-minute task.

If everything goes according to plan, it should take you five minutes or less to install your blog and get up and running, but if you make a mistake or something isn’t clear then you could spend a long time trying to figure it out. You may even have to call your web-host to help you get things back on track.

The benefit of installing WordPress by hand is that you will learn at least the basics of the components of your blog. You need to setup a database, you’ll need to get the WordPress program from WordPress.org and then install it or upload it to your new web host account.

Step 1 – Getting to the right Web Hosting section

Visit Siteground and click on the “Web Hosting” menu item.

Click on Web Hosting to start. More options are explained below.

Siteground offers three different plans to get you started:

All three plans offer high speed, security and enough space.

If you are on a budget and only want to start one blog, you probably want to use the StartUp plan.

The other two plans, offer additional premium features like longer backup retention, SSL certificates, additional space and the ability to run multiple blogs or websites.

If you start with the StartUp plan and later your blog gets big, or you want to add an ecommerce section, you can always upgrade to the next level.

Step 2 – Selecting the domain for your blog

Once you select a plan level, you can choose your new domain for your blog.

Make sure you check the “Register a New Domain” option (default) and then type in the domain you want for your blog. Remember it may take a few different tries to find a domain that is available that you like

Follow the tips I gave you earlier about choosing your domain and type the domain you want in there.

Select the New Domain option and type in the desired domain here.

When you get a new domain, you have the option to get the “.com” version of it, or a different one, like .net, .org and more. I recommend you stick to the most popular ones as suggested by Siteground, see screenshot:

The popular domain extensions are highlighted green

If you already have a domain because you bought it somewhere else, or you have had it for some time, then use the other option “I already have a Domain” and type in your domain.

Carefully type the domain name you already own. Include the domain extension

When you have completed the Domain selection, click the Proceed button. If everything went according to plan, you can move to step 3

Step 3 Filling out your details

Fill in the contact information details in the first section of the form. Every field except Company is required.

Fill these in accurately, these are used only to contact you regading your account.

The next section asks you for a password. You are free to come up with your own password.

Make sure it’s a password that other people will not be able to guess and make sure you can remember it; for now you could write it down. You need to enter the same password twice.

We’re going to need this password to get your blog installed in in just a few minutes so don’t forget it.

Enter the same password twice and don’t forget it.

The last section of the form is the payment details. Something to notice is that Siteground only accepts Visa or Mastercard for your payment so have your card handy for this step.

Fill out the standard payment information. Visa or Mastercard only.

Note the option in the bottom about the billing address. If your address for your credit card is different than the address you used in your contact details before, you’ll need to uncheck this box and fill in the details.

The last section is the Purchase Information. Review your options, then make sure that you agree to the SiteGround Terms of Service and then click on Submit Order to complete your order.

If all went well, your account will be setup within a minute or two of completing your order.

WooHoo. Pat yourself in the back! You are Ready to install WordPress!

To install your blog using WordPress in your new Siteground account, you’ll need to sign in to your Siteground account. You can login with the password you created earlier during your account purchase. Use this link to login to your Siteground account.

Your username should have been displayed when you completed the purchase, but it has also been emailed to you for reference.

Step 4: Installing WordPress

The first thing you need to do is go to your cPanel dashboard. cPanel is how you manage your siteground account for your blog. Look for the cPanel button under “My Accounts”

cPanel gives you access to the main controls of your account

When you first access cPanel, you’ll get a message like the one below, I recommend you use the “Access cPanel Securely” option.

Alert about secure access to cPanel.

From the cPanel dashboard, you need to click on the big WordPress icon near the top of the list of apps and scripts; it is listed under the Autoinstallers section.

The one-click installation script for WordPress in Siteground’s cPanel

On the next screen, you can read a little more about WordPress or click Install to complete the installation. Click the Install tab.

Click the Install tab to fill in the details and complete the installation.

On the next screen, you will select the options for your WordPress blog. You can and should leave most options with the defaults.

Siteground (unlike other companies) has already made the options secure, here are some more details about each option:

• Choose Protocol, leave as “http://”
• Choose Domain, should be selected to the domain you used during your registration.
• In Directory, you should leave it blank unless you have a specific reason to install your blog in a sub-folder (not recommended). I recommend you leave this blank.
• Databse Name, leave the default that is filled in.
• Under Database Settings, leave the Table Prefix the way it is.

Follow my advice on these options for best results

The next section takes care of the Site Settings. These settings include your Blog name and your Blog’s description.

Fill the “Site Name” and “Site Description” to change these. If you aren’t sure what to fill in here, leave it the way it is and you can change it later.

Under Admin Account, Siteground will have created a unique Admin Username, and Admin Password. 

Thes username and admin password have been filled out at random just for you so they are unique and safe. Copy and paste them somewhere safe so you can use them to login to your blog when you finish the installation. These are your WordPress login credentials.

If you want to change the email address, you can use another email address of your choice. This is where your WordPress blog will send any administrative notifications, like updates and password reset emails.

Details about your blog installation can be configured from this screen

Under the Select Plugins section, uncheck the “Limit Login Attempts” option and leave the “Clef Secure Passwordless Login” option unchecked. These can add unecessary complications to your blog for now.

Leave the Advanced Options alone and click on the Install button at the bottom.

After a few moments, you should see your blog installation complete. Siteground will give you a confirmation message along with your administrative address to login to WordPress.

You can now login to your WordPress blog!

If you forget what your administrative address for your blog is,  you can easily get to it by adding “/wp-admin/” to the end of your domain, for example if your domain is myownblog.com, your WordPress administrative address is myownblog.com/wp-admin/

You’ll need your WordPress credentials to login. These are the Admin username and Admin Password that Siteground gave you during the last step of the installation process.

Congratulations, You are ready to start blogging! Jump to that step now (start blogging)

This guide assumes you already have a web hosting account that meets the requirements for a WordPress installation. The requirements for a self-hosted WordPress installation are:

PHP 5.4 or greater
MySQL 5.5 or greater
The mod_rewrite Apache module

The web hosting account also needs cPanel for this guide to work.

If you need a web hosting account for your blog and you don’t want to use Inmotion Hosting or Siteground hosting, you may want to review my list of other recommended web hosts for WordPress.

Step 1 Login to your web hosting account

Use whatever administrative dashboard to login to your web hosting account. You should have been provided a link, username and password to access your account. If you can’t find this, please contact your web hosting support and ask them for your cPanel login information.

Step 2 Find the cPanel dashboard

Somewhere in your account, you should have a link to open your cPanel control dashboard. Look for this link and click on it.

Step 3 Create the database for WordPress

Once you are in the cPanel dashboard, you need to find the button labeled phpMyAdmin. This is the easy way of creating a database for your WordPress blog. Click on that to get started.

MySQL Database Wizard is an easy way to create your database for WordPress

The next few steps will help you create a database, a database user and a password for the username. Keep these items in a safe place for now while we install WordPress, we’ll need all of this information to complete the installation of WordPress. I suggest you open up a text file to copy and paste these as you go along. Here’s a template you can use to keep things in order:

database name:
database username:
database password:
database host:

Creating the database. The first step in creating the database is to come up with a database name. Each web host could be slighltly different so yours may look a little different than the screenshots I have here.

Notice the requirements for your database name. For example in this screenshot it shows that the database name can be up to 56 characters long. Sometimes there are other restrictions like no special characters or no numbers. Come up with a name and fill it in. When you fill in the name, click on the “Next Step” or “continue” button.

Fill in the name for your database. Come up with your own name.

Creating a database username. The next step after you name your database is to create a database username. Notice a the top, you’ll see that you have Added a database, the database name you came up with should be displayed up there. Then you create the username.

In a similar way to how you created the database, you’ll come up with your own username. Notice that there are limitations for this name as well.

I suggest you use the Password Generator button available in most cases. When you use the Generate Password button, you will need to copy and paste the password into the password field here’s an example of what it will look like:

The password generator is suggested to get a secure password.

When you have filled in the username and password, make sure you save the username and password on a file like I recommended earlier, then click on Create User to move to the next step.

Creating a secure database username for your blog

You should see a confirmation that you created a username and will be presented with the last step during the Database Wizard. Now we’re going to assign permissions so the username you created can access the database created earlier.

You will notice a lot of checkboxes here, just use the very first checkbox that says “All Privileges” and all the other checkboxes should get automatically filled in.

Before clicking on Next Step, you should make sure all the boxes are checked as shown in this screenshot:

Make sure all the privileges in the database have been checked.

The last step of the database creation process should show you that you created the database successfully. You’ll be presented with the username and database name, some hosts will also show you the password, but you should have saved it already.

Click on the “Go back home” or “back to cPanel” link, if you don’t see those links, make your way back to the cPanel before you move to the next step.

Now that your database is created, we can download the WordPress software and install it on your hosting account.

Step 4 Install WordPress

Visit http://wordpress.org/download and download the latest version of the WordPress software.

Download the WordPress zip file to your computer.

Go back to your cPanel dashboard and look for the File Manager app, it should be under a section titled: Files as shown in this screenshot.

Open the File Manager app from your cPanel dashboard

When you open the File Manager, you’ll be asked which folder you want to open. You must select “Document Root for:” and make sure your domain is selected in the dropdown box.

Check the “Show Hidden Files (dotfiles).” option and then click “go.”

Select the Document Root that shows your correct domain then click go.

From the File Manager, on the top you should find a button labeled Upload, click on this and a new window should come up.

The Upload button may look different in your own web host.

You should be presented with the File Upload window. Click on the “Choose File” button and find the WordPress file you downloaded earlier.

Click the Choose File button to upload the WordPress zip file

The WordPress file should be named wordpress-x.x.x.zip where the “x.x.x” represent the latest version of the software, eg wordpress-4.2.2.zip. Click on open or ok to upload the file.

When you upload the file, the File Upload manager should show a progress bar as the file gets uploaded. Wait until it says “complete” and then click on the bottom link to go back to the file manager.

The file upload dialog status should come up and indicate the progress

Back in the File Manager, you should see the WordPress zip file that you just uploaded, it should look something like this:

The File Manager should show you the WordPress zip file now.

If you don’t see the WordPress file, try clicking the reload button (see screenshot above). If you still don’t see the file, make sure you follow the follow the upload files correctly and try again.

Once you see the WordPress zip file in the File Manager, click on it once to select the file. Once you do this, the “Extract” button on the top (near the Upload button) should become available. Click on Extract.

You must select the WordPress file before it can be extracted.

This will pop-up a new message confirming your action. You should see the WordPress zip file indicated at the top and then the folder where it will be extracted to, leave everything as is and click the “Extract Files(s)” button.

You should see a list of files that get extracted and it should look something like this:

The WordPress zip file will be extracted quickly and you should see something like this.

Click the close button and this should bring you back to the File Manager where  you will see the original WordPress zip file and a new folder named “wordpress.” Double-click the new wordpress folder to go into it.

Find the wordpress folder and go into it by double-clicking its icon.

Once inside the WordPress folder, click on the “Select All” button; this will highlight all files and folders in the WordPress directory and enable the “Move” button.

Within the WordPress folder, select ALL files and folders to move them

Click on the Move button and a new dialog will pop-up. Carefully delete the “wordpress” word from the window that comes up as highlighted in this box. Leave the last “/” (slash) in place but make sure the word: wordpress is deleted, then click “Move File(s).”

Delete the word “wordpress” where it says to Enter the file path.

You should quickly see all the files disappear, and then will be taken back to the File Manager and the directory should now be empty. This is expected because you are in the “wordpress” folder, but we have just moved all the files and folders to the main folder.

Close this window, then go back to the cPanel dashboard and click on File Manger again. When you open the File Manager, you’ll be asked (again) which folder you want to open. You must select “Document Root for:” and make sure your domain is selected in the dropdown box.

You now should see all the WordPress files that will run your blog. It should look something like this:

Your directory may look a little different. This screenshot is missing some files to keep it shorter.

You can now close the cPanel windows.

Step 5 Configure WordPress blog installation

First, take a deep breath, you’re almost done! Also congratulate yourself for this part was the toughest. In fact if any of the next steps do not work as listed, chances are something didn’t quite work in a previous step.

Open up a new browser window and visit your domain, do not type it into Google or a search engine, type it into your browser address bar like this:

Type the URL (your domain) into the address directly.

If everything worked correctly, you should see the WordPress configuration screen, select your preferred language. For this guide, we’re using English, select it and click Continue.

Select the language you want to use and click Continue

The next screen details what you’re about to do. You’ll notice that it mentions the database, database username and the database password that we created several steps back. You should have this information saved on a file. Read through the WordPress notice and click on “Let’s go!”

WordPress guided configuration alert.

You need to fill in the details on the next screen. Database name, user name, and the database username password as mentioned before, you should have this info saved. Fill it in verbatim, copy and paste it carefully into each field and make sure there are no leading or trailing spaces (blank spaces).

There are two additional fields, the Databse Host and the Table Prefix. Most of the web hosts out there use the name “localhost” for your Database Host so you should not need to change it. For Table Prefix, it is recommended that you change it a little bit.

Add a 4 character random string of numbers and characters after the underscore “_” and finish it off with another underscore so it looks something like this:

wp_8ghs_

Then click on the Submit button.

Fill in the details for your database and web host carefully

On the next screen, you just have to click “Run the install” button and WordPress will then be installed.

You now need to fill in some details about your blog and create your administrative credentials. This is the fun part. Give your blog a title by filling in the “Site Title,” if you aren’t sure what to fill in here, you can fill in “Site Title” for now and change it later.

Create a username, this will be your main blog username. Do not make this username “admin” make it something unique like the one shown in the screenshot.

Come up with a password that is strong and safe and make sure you keep it safe for now, you’ll need it to start using your new blog.

Enter your e-mail. This is the e-mail that WordPress will use to send you notices, alerts and reset your password if you forget it.

For Privacy, you should keep this box unchecked for now. This will give you sometime to get some blogpost and content on your blog before you get your site listed in the search engines.

When you have filled out all the details, click on “Install WordPress” to finish the installation.

Fill in the details for your blog, create your username and password.

If all went well, you should see a Success! confirmation page. Click the “Log in” button to log in to your new WordPress blog!

Success! You installed WordPress and are ready to blog now.

When you click on the Log In window you can enter your Username and Password from the previous steps. You are now ready to blog!

You can now login to your WordPress blog!

If you forget what your administrative address for your blog is,  you can easily get to it by adding “/wp-admin/” to the end of your domain, for example if your domain is myownblog.com, your WordPress administrative address is myownblog.com/wp-admin/