Having just given my BLOG a complete make over I thought I would tell you the process to set up and create your own BLOG in the same way.
The steps are not complicated and if you are completely over-awed by the task then just hire a developer from Elance.com to help you out.
Step.1 If you don’t have access to your webservers cPanel, then ask your web host how to do that. If you have a standard cPanel, then you should be able to install various software include WordPress on to your website.
Step.2 Login to cPanel and then scroll to the bottom of the list of icons to a section that says software. Select the icon saying “Fantastico”, it normally has a wizards hat icon. The screen will then show a list of different software to install. You want to click the one for WordPress.
Step.3 A box will appear on the right hand side with details to install. Click on the link saying “new installation”. It is a good idea to install in a new directory, so in the 2nd box type in “blog”. You’ll also need to specify an admin login and password. The rest of the information you don’t need to complete at this time. Click “Install WordPress”, On the next page click “Finish Installation”, and the installation will take a few moments to complete
Step.4 Once the installation is complete the screen will tell you the location of the login screen, which you will need to bookmark. It will look like http://www.YourDomain.com/blog/wp-admin
Step.5 Open the login page and enter the user id and password you entered in step 3. and you’ll then enter the Dashboard screen for WordPress, most of the stuff here is prett self explanatory. It is more complicated than Blogger but certainly a more advanced tool for blogging.
Step.6 Go to http://wphacks.com/free-premium-wordpress-themes/ and find a theme you like… and click to download it to your Computer.
Step.7 Using an FTP program upload the theme to the location of your blog where the themes are stored… this is normally public_html/blog/wp-content/themes you’ll need to UNZIP the theme first then upload the folder in entirety to this themes folder.
Step.8 Go back to the dashboard of the BLOG, select the “Design” menu option, you’ll then see your theme in the selection. Click to select it, and it will show a preview of it, select the link at the top right of the preview to install the theme.
Done.
It is easy if you have the access for the cPanel and the FTP accounts, both of these can be obtained from your web host. If you can’t get yourself a new web host.
Tim
PS. Gonna do the same for my regular Fitness BLOG later this week, so will do a screen capture video to do a full demo of how easy it is.
About Fit Geek
Hey Tim,
Thanks for the great tips. I have a wordpress blog at http://www.HomeschoolFitnessCoach.com/blog but I would like it to become my main page rather than having the /blog. How do you do that?
Thanks Angela Ramos
Totally unrelated question but I must ask otherwise I will forget -
I keep seeing odd looking links in aweber emails from everyone except me – I assume that’s tracking info but how do you get it to do that? I have the tracking option turned on in my aweber options but my links don’t show the tracking data (at least in the text I see via Thunderbird & Yahoo mail).
Do you send out text only newsletter maybe?
Anyhoo, no need to answer directly. Just thought I’d give you a blog topic. Aweber rules. So does WP. I’ve set it up for people who can barely use email and they do OK with it.
Hi Angela
If you want it as your main page you’ll need to install the blog in the root directory, so when you go into do an install leave the folder box blank!
You will need to make sure everything else is cleared from that area to avoid any clash, so remove all your html files from that root folder.
You should be able to transfer the existing BLOG pages across to the new BLOG.
If in doubt once again it is a minor change, that should take a decent developer an hour to do at most.
Tim
Hi Dale
Quick answer, yes those odd links are because we use only text email messages, they tend to have better deliver-ability than HTML emails.
Down side to send text messages is the very limited tracking information, you can get the number of clicks but that is about it.
Tim
I have a blog using blogger. How can I transfer all posts etc to a new one with wordpress? Or would I have to start again?
Hi Jo
Yes you can, although the success with this is sketchy. In Blogger you can go in to the settings and click the Basic tab and the top item will say Export, click on that and follow the instructions.
Then import the file that is created into WordPress using the Import feature in the Manage tab on WordPress.
Tim
nice! i’m gonna make my own journal