Ah, the decadent lifestyle of a successful blogger. Want to join? It’s just this easy:
1. Good luck finding a domain!
This is a case of “All of the good ones are taken.” Think of a name and try it out in a browser. Expect disappointment. Either they’re already in use or you’ll get something like this:
Someone thought of that name before you, bought that domain name, and is eager to part with it for some of your money. This situation is likely to get worse with AI around to come up with even more obscure name possibilities for these domain resellers to buy.
My recommendation is to swallow your pride and just keep thinking of domain names until you hit on one you can live with and hasn’t already been commandeered. And that, my friends, is how I ended up with moretimethansense.com!
Once you stumble on a suitable domain name you can reserve it for about fifty bucks from any domain registrar. GoDaddy is probably the most (in)famous; I used BlueHost since that is also the most well known web hosting site if you plan to use WordPress (which was always my intent).
2. Start writing checks!
You need a web hosting site. I use BlueHost and went with their cheapest plan – shared domain basic – for that I pay $10 / month. I also got SSL support for another $8 / month (this gets you https capabilities). Finally, and let your conscience be your guide on this one, a site is required to publish a physical address so I rent a PO Box. YMMV but mine costs $20 / month. So, my ongoing cost is $38 / month. If you think of this as a hobby, you’d be hard pressed to come up with another hobby that is cheaper. If you think of it as a business, may God bless you!
3. Roll up your sleeves!
I use WordPress. It’s free and open source.
If you’re afraid of breaking your hosted image (as I was at the beginning) you can also install a local version of WordPress on your PC or Mac and try out stuff there before trying it on your hosted web site. I would recommend taking the WordPress tutorial as a starting point. You could also pay for some more official training but this is one place where, unequivocally, your best teacher is your last mistake. And I’ve had some excellent teachers!
WordPress is run very much like the Apple or Microsoft store. You log in and can search for apps (called plug-ins here) that perform functions you might want. Almost every plug-in has a free version and a subscription version. Again, my overarching design philosophy is cheap! so I always go with the free version. Hasn’t let me down yet.
4. What no swearing yet? Let’s take care of that now.
Early on you have to decide on your theme. The theme is the layout of your web site. The good news: there are an almost infinite number of themes available on WordPress. The bad news: there are an almost infinite number of themes available on WordPress. Many are oddly specific (“this theme is ideal for selling lace doilies”) and, if you should find one that piques your interest, you might get fairly deep into it before you realize the implications (“this theme can only be used to sell lace doilies; it cannot do anything else”).
I would never make a recommendation here but I use the Blocksy theme. It was free; some themes aren’t. The only advice I would give (and this is true from this point moving forward) is find one you can live with and stick with it. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Or even the enemy of mediocre. Just remember, you are no longer in charge. Your theme is.
5. You’re going to screw up. Plan on it.
WordPress gives you the capability to have both a production and a staging site. You can clone your production site to your staging site, and you can deploy changes from your staging site to your production site. The theory here is make changes to staging and when you’re happy with them deploy them to your production site. Your production site will be what users see when they enter your URL. Until you publicize your production URL this really doesn’t matter but at some point you’ll want to make your mistakes behind the curtain of the staging site.
This process works well but I did install a (free) backup/restore plug-in as well. I’ve tested it to see that I can restore backup images but it’s never come into play.
6. Let ‘er rip!
First I created the usual suspects of pages (an About page, a Contact Me page, Subscribe / Unsubscribe and a main page). BlueHost limits the number of pages you can create but most blog entries will be posts. In my case my posts hang off my main page. It sounds daunting but, again, before you actually tell people about your URL you can flounder all you want w/o anyone being the wiser. Possibly not even you!
I’d recommend beginning with a text-only blog, kind of the “Hello World” of blogging.
7. Meet your new time sink – the Add Plugins site
As you stray away from text-only blogs (which, maybe you never will), you can generally find a desired capability implemented as a plug-in. However, the search here isn’t great and if the developer didn’t use the same terminology as you did, you’ll never find it. I wanted a quiz plugin (along the lines of the NYT Friday quiz) and couldn’t find it for the longest time. I finally found the capability in an education plugin.
The good news is it is very likely someone before you had gotten the plugin to work and has created a YouTube video on how to do it. YouTube is your new BFF.
My two rules, take them or leave them:
- Make do with the free version.
- Expect things to “mostly work”. In other words, expect things to not work. And often in the oddest of ways – one plugin will cause another plugin to stop working. WordPress requires very little in the way of programming but quite a bit in terms of machinations to achieve a workable version.
8. Friends, Romans, countrymen.
Release your URL into the wild. Bask in the glory and adulation that will unquestionably follow.
Actually, plead with your friends to visit your site. Set up a mailing list (this is an Outlook feature) to tell the willing when you have new content.
It helps me to follow these two rules:
- Quit checking to see how many people visited any give page.
- Remind myself that I am doing this for fun; it is a hobby not an obsession.
9. Expect some new friends. Ones you’d rather not have.
Junk emails. Lots of junk emails. I implemented a simple CAPTCHA plugin on any of my pages that can send email to me, but it doesn’t seem to dissuade anyone. My “Contact Me” page in particular generates a lot of junk. Either bots can defeat that simple CAPTCHA or there is an actual human behind all this junk mail. Or something in the middle.
These are mostly of the SEO variety (I can optimize your sites placement in search engines – clearly designed for sites that are attempting to generate revenue), although I do get quite a few from Eastern European women seeking marriage. Once again, I’ve just learned to live with them (the junk emails, not the Eastern European women) and delete them once a week or so. I suspect there is a plugin solution to this but that it also involves money
10. Did I tell you I’m proud of you?
If you got this far in your adventure, rock on! You did great! And even greater things await you!
