Blogging for beginners imnabeel

A complete blogging guide for dummies.

From theory to practically putting your

blog live

By Nabeel Shamshad

http://imnabeel.com

BLOGGING FOR BEGINNERS

By Nabeel Shamshad

http://imnabeel.com

Copyright © 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or

otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Disclaimer

All the material contained in this book is provided for educational

and informational purposes only. No responsibility can be taken for

any results or outcomes resulting from the use of this material.

While every attempt has been made to provide information that is

both accurate and effective, the author does not assume any

responsibility for the accuracy or use/misuse of this information.


By Nabeel Shamshad

http://imnabeel.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 4

INGREDIENTS FOR A BLOG ......................................................................... 6

A Niche .................................................................................................. 6

Knowledge ............................................................................................. 6

Domain Name ......................................................................................... 6

Hosting Account ...................................................................................... 6

BUYING A DOMAIN NAME & HOSTING .......................................................... 7

Step By Step Guide To Buying A domain name & Hosting ............................. 8

INSTALLING WORDPRESS IN YOUR HOSTING .............................................. 14

Step By Step Guide To Installing Wordpress ............................................. 14

THINGS TO DO WITH A BRAND NEW WORDPRESS WEBSITE ......................... 21

Change The Title ................................................................................... 21

Change Tag Line ................................................................................... 22

Delete Default Post ................................................................................ 22

Change The Theme ............................................................................... 23

Change Widgets .................................................................................... 24


By Nabeel Shamshad

http://imnabeel.com

INTRODUCTION

Blog is a kind of website that maintains continuous chronological data. It

is an informational site that has discrete entries known as posts. Blogs

were in fact said to be online journals in the beginning where people

would write about a topic or use it as a diary but blogging has evolved a

lot ever since.

Blogging that was initially being done by individuals as a hobby has now

been adopted by businesses. Even individuals are now using it as their

main source of income. Blogging has now become a lot more than a

journal. In this advanced era it is being used for building brand

awareness, providing customer support, providing information, building

community etc.

Internet is filled with information related to this topic. Beginners desirous

to learn blogging often jump from one website to another in hopes of

finding a source that will guide them from very beginning but end up with

information overload. One has to spend days and even weeks to get

answers to all the newbie questions that arise in the mind of a beginner.

This guide does not claim to be the best Beginner’s Guide To Blogging but

this surely is a laser focused guide that will actually spoon feed you to get

your blog running.

What Will This Guide Teach You?

This ebook is a step by step guide to actually set up your blog and guides

you until the blog is finally live on the World Wide Web.

This book stays focused on the topic without beating about the bush. It

discusses all the necessary things and leaves those which make things


By Nabeel Shamshad

http://imnabeel.com

difficult without any gains. After all this is a guide to “Blogging For

Beginners”.


By Nabeel Shamshad

http://imnabeel.com

INGREDIENTS FOR A BLOG

Now that you have learnt most of the theoretical aspect, let’s get to more

practical aspect of blogging. Things that you would need to make your

own blog are as follows:

A Niche

Before you start a blog you must decide what your topic is going to be.

Preferably select a topic that interests you because, it will make it easy

for you to write engaging posts in it.

Knowledge

If you are planning to start your blog on a topic that you are not very

good at then it is recommend that you get some knowledge first or at

least select and identify sources which you can later use to enlighten

yourself on the topic.

Domain Name

It is the web address of your website www.yoursite.com. Detailed

explanation on domain names is given in later chapters.

Hosting Account

It is where your website / blog contents actually reside. Details are

discussed in coming chapters.

These are the most basic ingredients. Dozens more can be added to this

recipe but let us keep things simple for beginners. Hoping that you can

work on the first two ingredients yourself, I will now hold your hands and

take you through the step by process of actually creating your blog.


By Nabeel Shamshad

http://imnabeel.com

BUYING A DOMAIN NAME & HOSTING

Domain:

A domain is the name of your website which you can refer to. People use

this name in their web browsers to visit your blog. For example

www.imnabeel.com is the domain name of a blog that I created to teach

internet marketing to beginners.

Any individual having some bucks can buy a domain name. You don’t

need to be a company or an organization to qualify for buying a domain

name. In order to purchase a domain name you will have to register it

from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)

through a domain name registrar. Domain name registrars are

organizations that manage reservations of domain names. A few good

examples of domain name registrars are NAMECHEAP (Recommended)

and GODADDY etc.

Hosting:

Website hosting or hosting account is a place where your actual website

and its files reside and in order to visit your website the domain name will

be used. That is why it is called a web address. As a domain name is

analogous to a company name, hosting is analogous to the building that

has all the infrastructure of that company.

Web hosting companies do not only provide you some space to host your

website, they also provide lots of other features with their hosting plans

such as regular backups of your website, firewall protection, technical

support, FTP access, email services etc. These services vary from host to

host. There are two different types of web host companies: Free ones and

Paid ones.

http://www.namecheap.com/?aff=72642


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Step By Step Guide To Buying A domain name & Hosting

Step 1: Signup on Namecheap by following This Link which I think is not

a difficult process for somebody who just downloaded this guide.

Step 2: After that sign in to your namecheap account and enter your

desired domain name in the large search box displayed at the center of

screen and click on the “search” button.

Step 3: You will see something like this if your desired name is available.

You can click on the grey colour cart button with a plus sign as shown on

the righter side of this image to add this domain in your cart.

Some other suggestions are also shown on the page which have the same

domain name as the one you entered but with different TLDs (Top level

domains). For example: in the above image the domain name is

“someexampledomain” and the TLD is “.com”. Similarly, different TLDs

with same domain name are shown in the suggestions section. For this

domain name suggestion section would show someexampledomain.net,

http://www.namecheap.com/?aff=72642


By Nabeel Shamshad

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someexampledomain.org, someexampledomain.biz,

someexampledomain.tv and some other TLDs as suggestion. However,

.com is the TLD which is believed to be the most beneficial for your

website as it is the most common, easy to remember and good for search

engine optimization.

Step 4: In the previous step you added the domain in your cart and now

you are going to add a hosting plan to your cart. To do that in the

horizontal menu bar on right hand side, hover your mouse over “Hosting”

and click on the first option “Shared Hosting”. On new page that opens,

choose among four different available plans that are:

1. Value (Host up to 3 websites, 20 GB space) $3.98/month

2. Professional (Up to 10 websites, 50 GB space, Unlimited bandwidth)

$7.48/month

3. Ultimate (50 websites, unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth)

$13.98/month

4. Business (Not for simple sites, for very heavy sites like big

ecommerce sites) $19.98/month

I recommend no.1 that is VALUE plan. Being a beginner, one should first

start with one website only and after having some command over it

should move to building more. Value plan provides us with more than

enough resources to start our first website. After selecting your desired

plan, choose number of years from respective dropdown menu and click

on add to cart. Ignore data centre option (doesn’t make a difference).


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5.

Step 5: On the next page select the first option that is “I want to use a

domain in my cart” and select your domain from drop down menu (the 1

you bought in last chapter will appear in dropdown).

Click on orange continue button at the right hand side of the page.

Step 6: On the next page click on confirm order button to buy the items

in your cart.


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Step 7: On the next page you have to select the payment method from

three available options:

Choose the option that suits you and click on the orange “Continue”

button on the right hand side of the page to proceed with the payment

procedure. Congratulations now you have your very own domain name

and a hosting account.


By Nabeel Shamshad


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Step 6: Check inbox of your email account that you used to register on

namecheap. A few minutes after completing the hosting purchase you will

find an email from namecheap with following details.

Address of your cpanel: something like this https://server86.web-

hosting.com:1234/

Username

Password

Go the address of your cpanel by pasting it in browser’s address bar and

login using the provided user credentials. You will now see your cpanel

which looks something like this:


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This is the panel that will allow you to actually access the hosting space,

create a blog in it and do a lot of other things. However, in this guide we

are focusing on setting up your blog only and no other distractions.


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INSTALLING WORDPRESS IN YOUR HOSTING

If you remember I discussed about WORDPRESS being a free blogging

platform but you can use wordpress platform in two ways. First one is by

going to wordpress.com, registering an account (which is free) and then

making a free blog. The second way is to install their open source

platform in your own hosting space that you have bought. This way you

will have complete control over looks and functionalities of your blog. If

you don’t already know what Wordpress is, you need to be enlightened.

WORDPRESS is an open source tool that is used to create websites. It was

made to enable those who don’t know anything about coding and

programming to create professional looking websites with just a few

mouse clicks. It is the most powerful and the most popular blogging

platform and a Content Management System. A step by step guide about

installing WORDPRESS in your NAMECHEAP hosting goes here:

Step By Step Guide To Installing Wordpress

Step 1: Login to Cpanel and find the softaculous application by scrolling

down a little to the menu called “Software/Services”. Click on the app.


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Step 2: On the menu on left side click on “Blogs” to see all available

options and click on wordpress.


By Nabeel Shamshad


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Step 3: The new page will show some information about wordpress and

its rating. Click on the INSTALL button as shown in the figure.

Step 4: Now a form will appear in front of you as shown below.


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Choose Protocol: Here choose “http://” OR “http://www”

Choose Domain: Your purchased domain will appear here. Select it.

In directory: Leave it empty.

Database name: Leave it as it is, you don’t need to change it.

Table Prefix: Leave it as it is.

Site Name: Write the desired name Of your blog. For eg: “My Blog”

Site Description: Write some information about your site. May be a tag

line.

Admin Username: Write your desired username. It will be used to login to

your wordpress admin panel.


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Password: Set a good password with alphabets, numbers and special

characters.

Admin Email: This is the email address associated to your domain. You

can simply add “admin” before “@yourdomain.com”. Just like in my case

it would be “[email protected]”.

Select Language: Choose your language.

Finally click on Install button. You will then see a page with following

message. Hoorah! You have installed wordpress successfully.

Click on the link shown as administrative url to see following login screen.


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Type in your admin username and password to login to your wordpress

admin area. Here is a screen shot of what admin area looks like.

As of now your main site will look something like this:


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You can change the looks of your blog easily. You can see your blog live

at www.yourdomain.com and you can login to your blog’s admin area

using www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.php (change “yourdomain” with

your own domain name that you bought). You can use the admin panel to

change the theme of your blog, publish new posts and pages, install plug-

ins to add more functionality to your blog and much much more. Just play

around a little and you will learn the ways.


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21

THINGS TO DO WITH A BRAND NEW WORDPRESS

WEBSITE

Once your wordpress installation is complete, your blog is accessible using

your domain name from anywhere in the world but at this point it will

appear with its default theme, title, tag line, article and widgets. We don’t

want any of its default features because we have better plans for our blog

right? So here is a list of things with step by step instructions that need to

be done with a brand new wordpress website:

Change The Title

Default title of a new wordpress blog is “My Blog” or it may be something

other similar but we need to change it. In order to change it login to your

dashboard (admin area) and hover your mouse over the “settings” option

from the left vertical menu. Click on the “general” option from the sub

menu that appears. See the snapshot.


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The first thing on the page that opens is “Site Title”. Write your desired

title in the text field.

Change Tag Line

Just beneath the “site title” option on the same page is “tag line” option

that can also be edited easily. After editing the site title and site tagline

click on the “save changes” button at the bottom of the page. Site tag line

appears on every page of the blog beneath the site title but some themes

don’t show it.

Delete Default Post

A new installation of worpress comes with a default post with title “Hello

World” which needs to be deleted. To do so, click on the “posts” option

from left vertical menu bar to go to a page where all the posted articles or

posts are listed.

In the above example an article posted on my website with title “600k+

GSA SER Verfied List (7th March 2015)” can be seen. The default “Hello

World” article will appear on the same place in a brand wordpress blog. To

delete that post hover your mouse over post to make options appear and

then click on “Trash” as pointed out by an arrow in the above picture.


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Change The Theme

The default theme for wordpress is “Twenty Fourteen” but might be

changed in near future as 2015 has already started. The default theme

does not suit all types of websites/blogs. If it is a personal diary type

blog, it might suit well but you need better theme if you want to build a

brand and do some business. To change the theme hover your mouse

over “Appearance” option in left menu bar to open a sub menu. Click on

theme.

A page with all the available themes will open. You can apply any of the

installed themes by hovering mouse over that theme and clicking on the

“Activate” button that appears or you can see a live preview of that theme

before you apply that (See number in the picture below). You also have

the option to search the wordpress.org for more free themes or add your

purchased themes by clicking on the “Add New” button (See number 2 in

the image):


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Change Widgets

Widgets add different features to your sidebars or footers. A new

wordpress blog has some of the following applied as default widgets:

1. Search Widget

2. Calender Widget

3. Archive Widget

4. Meta Widget

We don’t need Meta widget as it includes links like “Log in, Register etc”.

You can keep this widget if you can’t remember the login url that is

“yourdomain.com/wp-login.php” but you will never find this widget

appearing on any popualr website. You may also delete the calendar

widget as it serves no more purpose than telling what we can easily find

elsewhere. To edit widgets hover your mouse over “Appearance” and click


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on the “Widgets” link that appears in sub menu. You will be taken to a

page like the one shown below.

Available widgets are listed on the left side which can be dragged and

dropped into available sidebars that appear on right side of the above

image. Different themes have different available widgets and different

sidebars. Some themes allow using widgets in footers as well while others

don’t.

Your blog is now ready and does not look like a newly setup blog but

there are many more things that still need to be done with your blog like

making your About Us, Contact us, Privacy Policy pages, getting a good

logo for your site and setting up favicon etc etc. I know you want your

blog to look like a professional one and an authority in your niche. What I

just told you in this chapter was only the beginning. A complete check of

list of things that need to be taken care of in a new blog to make it

perfect will guide you in the right direction.

Blogging for beginners imnabeel

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