Hey Gang,

If you have no idea about how to use wordpress but some blogger somewhere (like myself) told you that it is the cat’s meow when it comes to blogging, then this is the wordpress tutorial for you! I want to take people who are completely unfamiliar with wordpress through getting their own self-hosted wordpress blog.

Why Self Hosted?

Wordpress.com hosts blogs for people who want to get into blogging but don’t want to pay any money to do so. This seems like a wonderful idea on the surface, but there is one major flaw with hosting with other blogging services. You do not own the content. Never have I seen copyright be such a big issue in my life, but copyright is a BIG DEAL when it comes to blogging. When you post an article to Wordpress or Google’s blogging service or any blogging service which you do not host yourself, then you are giving them rights to the content. Also, the domain name “yourname.wordpress.com” is not your own either. Yaro Starak told a story about a blogger who used Google’s blogging service to host several blogs. The guy actually built a blogging empire with the help of Google. However, something went wrong and Google misjudged one of the blogs on his account as spam. Instead of inquiring with him about the issue, they just deleted his entire account! Yes, that means that even the blogs which weren’t flagged as spam went with it. He was left with nothing, and all of his search engine rankings were gone and all his work was simply over.

Therefore self-hosting becomes a big issue when it comes to blogging because if you host the blog yourself, not only do you have sole rights to the content you post to your blog, but you also own the domain name which the blog resolves to. That means when someone types in “yourblogname.com” they will ONLY find you, and not a “this blog was removed because it violated our Terms of Service agreement” message.

Step 1.) Picking a name and topic for your blog

This is one of the most difficult things for me. When I am starting a blog I am usually at a loss for a decent name. I can think of lots of names which have a level of meaning but they are not useful when it comes to trying to capture search engine ranking. But here are some tips I have heard from other bloggers in the past:

1. Pick a name which is self-explanatory. That means that someone should be able to deduce what you are writing about simply from reading the title of your blog. Take my novaEbusiness.com website for example. If you read that and think for a moment, it should become apparent that the content on the website is about e-business. The title of this blog is a tad bit more difficult to figure out — but “Tech Mindset” is about building the mindset to use technology effectively. The name needs to be self-explanatory.
2. The name needs to be catchy. The fewer syllables, the better! It needs to stick in people’s minds — a meaningful name will go a long way, but keeping it short helps as well. People just simply can’t remember long names.
   A solution to long names, though, would be to compress them into memorable acronyms. You will need to be careful about what you stick in people’s mind’s though because they will only be able to remember one (or MAYBE) two names.
3. The domain needs to be available. If you get the perfect name, you need to be sure that the domain name is available. Don’t buy a domain name yet until you read part two of this series!! You can probe for available names (and possible alternatives if the one you want is taken) at Go Daddy. While I don’t recommend GoDaddy for hosting or domain names they are easy to use to find new domain names with. So go check out their site and use their quick and easy tool for finding out if your idea for a good domain is free. Next lesson I’ll show you two good ways to actually get ahold of the domain name you searched out in this lesson! Remember not to purchase quite yet! Just find one that works for you.

Once you have a good domain name then we can move on to the next part in this series. I’ll have it up ASAP!

In the mean time — let me know the name you chose in the comments form below! I would love to hear from you!

God Bless,
-Dan