There are a couple of ways to set up a blog – the easy way and the hard way.
I did things the easy way for quite a few years. This way you just set up an account with Google – Blogger. You use Blogger’s software on the yourblog.blogspot.ca site. Easy peasy.
However, the more serious bloggers usually use WordPress. I really like the look of their templates as well. The one I’m using right now is a default template but it’s nice and clean looking.
If you want to use WordPress, the best way is to have your own domain and host the software and database on your own site. That is certainly the hard way as I found out.
First you have to find a site host. For me that’s Webserve. Very reasonable price and free domain name registration. The next step is to register a domain name. I didn’t want to use my real name as a domain, and I’m not a commercial entity like superwidgets.com so I just went with a generic name and registered myself as a Canadian site. After a couple of hours I was recognized by the DNS servers of the world and was all set.
Next came the configuration and installation of software. I used Webserve’s Control Panel to get started. It looks intimidating because you are really starting from scratch to build anything – website, forum, or blog. But it’s really a paint by numbers job.
Webserve has some installation scripts for blogging or forum software so it was a matter of naming the blog and clicking “Install.” After that the blog shows up at a subfolder location on the site. The database for WordPress is created and configured automagically.
After that I had to add some features to the blog, protect myself from spam and write my first post.
It’s doing things the hard way but I found that with a working knowledge of Linux and using the automated scripts it wasn’t beyond my technical capabilities. So here I am.
Very interesting Ray. I was not aware of your blogging and of course we don’t talk often since the good ol Watch U Seek days.
I am very interested in reading your thoughts and blogs ! Hope you and yours are well !
CHEEPS aka Rick
@CHEEPS
I’m still hanging round Watchuseek but I’ve resigned my Moderator duties. Ernie recently sold the site to a large Internet forum operator and has decided to retire. We are not sure how that will affect things going forward.