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How to Set up Wordpress - Free Wordpress Blog Setup Tutorial
How to set up Wordpress Blog. A step by step Wordpress tutorial on how to create a free customized blog on Wordpress.com
This is hoping you've read the article on:
What is Wordpress and it Introduction Guide for Beginners
And fully understood the difference between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org blog applications. And now you are sure that the .com version of Wordpress meets your goal.
If you don't yet understand the difference or what to expect, first go read the article and if you still want to go ahead to create a free Wordpress blog, then come back to this post.
Wordpress Setup Tutorial
How to Set up Wordpress Blog - Step One
Go to wordpress.com
Click on Sign up now.
On the page it displays enter a Username that is not less than 4 characters. You can include numbers if you want.
Enter a password and Email address that you will like to use to receive notifications. Agree to Wordpress blogging terms. Tick on Gimme a blog! and click Next below.
See an example below.
Step two
It's time to name your blog.
If you have decided to blog on wordpress.com I assume it is a personal blog, since you know you can not monetize on this platform.
So you have a choice to make on whether or not you want to be found by the search engines. If you want to, then you should choose a name that has your topic of interest main keyword on it.
See Effective keyword research part 1
But if it is a completely personal blog for just family and friends, then get creative, use a name that suits you.
For this tutorial I am going with 'the-dairy-of-karo'.
Now doesn't that sound nice. It reminds me of the movie "The dairy of a mad black woman". I wish I have the time to keep a dairy!
Anyway, back to the how to set up Wordpress step two.
Next is to choose a title for the blog.
A blog's title basically gives a short summary of what the blog's content will be about.
If you would like to be found by the search engines then, you should be very selective of the name you choose.
I went with 'karo and her day to day living' (this is definitely a personal blog so I can use any name).
As you can see below, you are required to set privacy for your blog. So do you want your blog to appear in search engines? You have a decision to make here.
If you want your blog to appear, just tick the little box by the side and if not, un-tick it ( You can still edit your privacy settings in your admin panel).
I am living it un-ticked.
Note: Sorry in the screen below I used hypen between the characters in the domain name. After copying the screen and clicking sign up, I was told hypen is not allowed between words.
So please take note. Instead of 'the-dairy-of-karo' as shown in the screen below, it's 'thedairyofkaro'.
Click sign up.
Step three
Now you get a screen as shown below. Enter your details and click save profile.
Now notice the message above the screen. A message has been sent to your email to complete your registration.
So go check your email. You'll get something similar to the image below.
Just click on the activation link to activate your blog. After you do, your account becomes activated.
Click on login, to log into your admin area. From there you can view your blog.
More on How to Set up Wordpress
Customize Your Blog
First thing you want to do is click on your blog title above your admin panel to view your blog.
If you like the default template you can keep it. If you don't, then click on 'Appearance' by the left hand side of your dashboard. It will display lots of templates that you can choose from.
To see how a particular template looks like, click on preview.
If you like it just click on Activate above it and it will become your blog's new template. If you don't like it, close it and preview another. Until you find the one you like.
The left hand side of your dashboard contains every item that appears on your blog.
A click on each of them will tell you what they are about and you can edit everyone of them.
Start with 'Settings' to change your blog's title if you want, add a tagline to overwrite that of wordpress and upload a photo if you want.
It is important that you click on the 'Privacy settings' and set who and who you want to read your blog.
Wordpress.com has some nice features like Ratings, nested comments, automatic favicon e.t.c. to make your blog look nice.
If you upload a photo, it automatically becomes your favicon (An icon that appears on the top of the browser whenever someone loads your site).
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