Today’s topic is actually related to the theme of this site; that is when one is managing infographics and photos online, one has to associate with how to build a business website in order to put everything properly in one place. Hence, besides sharing tips and secrets of creating photos and infographics, I feel the urge to educate you on how to start a WordPress blog.

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. PLEASE READ MY DISCLOSURE FOR MORE INFO.

I understood many of you are looking for cheap web hosting for a start. This is especially true when you are first starting out learning to make a website, and you do not want to invest too much into the business yet. Believe me, I had gone through this route before, and I am not different from you. But one thing I want to assure you is that the time saving and lesser headaches that you are going to have when it comes to selecting a right web host for your own website is well worth it in the long run. This will be especially true when your traffic to your website starts to grow exponentially.

Click here to start a blog on WordPress, and follow the tutorial below to setup right.

Let’s come back to get you started on making a website on WordPress. If you are looking for an affordable (note: not cheap!) solution to your web hosting needs, I would strongly advocate choosing SiteGround. This is a fantastic web host, especially if you are looking to a site using WordPress. I personally have had a wonderful experience hosting (this site is hosted with SiteGround) with them.

Since working from home, I am able to plan for myself my work schedule and have more time to do things that I love instead of following other’s people instructions at work. It was a great lifestyle change. Best of all, my health has improved and I don’t fall sick so often due to insufficient rest and sleep.

Any person can make money with a blog, and I believe it is worth while to invest for blog hosting. In the long run, you will be able to make some money back from these investments.

SiteGround is one of the top web hosting companies  since March 2004. You can begin setting up your blog with SiteGround for as low as US$3.95 a month. (special promo – 60% OFF the regular $9.95/mo.) For a start, I strongly recommend signing up for the Startup Plan through SiteGround. It is affordable and you can save some money by signing up for at least 12 months. The good thing is that there are no contract binding, and you can ask for pro-rated refund anytime.

Well, you maybe thinking you can get web hosting with other service providers for a lot cheaper in costs. But I can tell you getting the cheapest web host is not going to help you in the long run. The biggest problem with cheap web hosts is that too many accounts are sharing on a single host server, and that leads to slower performance and speed. If your WordPress site starts to generate lots of traffic, that will affect your bandwidth performance, and ultimately cost you sales and profits. In addition, you may not have the time to switch to a new web host if you are not happy with your current one. So this is a factor which you may need to bear in mind, when selecting a reliable and safe web host and it’s plans. Further, do not use Blogger web sites as these are deemed by companies as unprofessional. Hence, having own hosted blogs using WordPress is the best way to go.

Here are the Steps to Setup a WordPress blog on SiteGround

1. Choose Your WordPress Hosting Plan

You can click here to buy a domain name and create a blog, and then follow the steps listed below.

Firstly, you will have to come up with a domain name for your website. This domain name can be your company or own name, that best represents your personal branding online. It can be challenging for certain people, and it is advisable to spend some time to consider carefully what you really want for your domain name. The best approach will be to write down at least 5 to 10 domain names for your website. Then consider the pros and cons of each, cross out those that do not like it or do not have potential or appeal to your audience that you are targeting. Eventually decide on the best domain name that you are most comfortable with.

You can get your domain registered directly with SiteGround when signing up your WordPress web hosting. It is more efficient  and speedy this way. You can get a FREE domain for the 1st year when you get at least 12 months of SiteGround hosting. By doing so, you can save up some great amount of money. You get a lower monthly price when you buy a minimum 12 months of hosting, hence the FREE domain feature is a good bonus to have for a start. Once you have decided to obtain the FREE domain, continue next step to purchase your hosting plan and registered your FREE domain at the same time. It will be a great time saver.

Currently, SiteGround offers 3 plans and you can sign for any of them based on your budget and needs.

Here is a suggested guideline for selecting the WordPress Web Hosting:

• The StartUp plan is perfect for people with one website that are starting now
• The GrowBig plan is a great value for money offer, including the option for multiple websites and the SuperCacher that greatly improves a WordPress and Joomla website speed
• The GoGeek plan is perfect for people with e-commerce and larger sites, or more geeky development needs like staging and GIT integration

Whichever plan you choose, it will come with these awesome WordPress tools:

• 1-Click Installer – Launch your website with a click.
• SuperCacher – 3 levels of caching for an ultra-fast site.
• Autoupdates – Always have the latest WP version.
• WordPress Staging – Easily test and deploy changes.*
• WP-CLI Enhanced – Command line management option on all plans.
• Git Pre-installed – Interface for Git repo creation.*

*Only for GoGeek or higher plans

If you want to know more about the features of each of the web hosting plan, click on  either “All Essential Features” text link  or “Jump To Plan Details” text link that is below the orange “Get Started” button.

Once you decided the plan, proceed to next step by clicking on the “Get Started” button.

2. Choose Your Domain Name

In Step 2, all you need to do is to select “Register a New Domain” or “I already have a Domain”. In your case if you are registering a new domain, just check on “Register a New Domain”. If you are transferring an existing domain from other web host, then you need to “I already have a Domain” option instead.

The next important thing is to register your domain name that you have decided. Input that into the text field between the www. and .com entries. You can also change the .com to others if it happens that your domain name is already taken or registered by others. Clicking the down arrow next to the .com gives you an array of choices such as .net, .org and etc., which you can choose.

Note that all plans include FREE domain registration for the 1st year of web hosting. This free domain registration is going to be included in the SiteGround hosting service. Hence, by default it is ticked as shown in the image above. Next, click on “Proceed” button.

3. Review and Complete Your Web Hosting Plan

At Step 3, this is where you need to confirm and finalize your web host plan details. Specifically, select the plan that you would like to use, namely the Startup, GrowBig and GoGeek plans. To start create website online, I strongly advise that you go for the Startup plan first. You can easily change plans later in the course if your needs change or grow. All you need to do is to inform the tech support to advise the change in plan, or you can easily upgrade to a higher plan right inside your hosting plan account via the CPanel.

Let’s talk about the costs of blogging. To setup a WordPress blog on SiteGround is relatively easy. For a start, you can select the Startup plan for only US$3.95 per month for 12 months. You have a choice of selecting either 12, 24 or 36 months. There is also a 1 month Trial, but you have to pay additional fee of US$14.95 on top of 1 monthly US$3.95. I do not recommend signing up for 1 month trial as the cost is higher and the time is too short to assess how the hosting service performs.

One thing to note is that the advertised discount applies to any of the initial periods chosen during the sign up process. Once this period is over and when the account is renewed, you MAY not get that special price anymore. In other words, you may have to pay the regular pricing, eg. US$14.95/mth instead of US$7.95 for the GrowBig plan. Therefore, it is good to consider carefully how long you want to sign up for the hosting plan. For me, I would and have gotten the 36 months, as I do not have to be consciously reminded to pay up every year for hosting. I have paid for 3 years, and I can “forget” about it until the time it comes for me to renew again.

For the extra services, leave the defaults as they are for domain registration. As for SSL certificate, it is now a standard feature built-in provided by all web hosting providers as they are a pre-requisite for legitimate business websites. Hence, it is not listed under the extra services anymore. You may also want to pay for Domain Privacy Protection, which is only $1 per month. This is so that your contact information stays safe. Check on the total price that you are going to pay, read and check on Terms of Service clause (it is not selected by default), and click on “Pay Now” button. Next, you will be directed to input your payment details in the next page. You are done! All you do now is wait for the confirmation order email in your inbox.

4. Install WordPress on SiteGround

Well, this is an important step which I believe most of you will be most interested in. Actually, setting up a WordPress blog on SiteGround is as easy and fast as signing up for SiteGround web hosting.

1. Once you obtain your login details given by SiteGround via email, login accordingly. Remember to record down your SiteGround’s login details in a separate place and for safe keeping in case you forgets the password.
2. Click on “My Accounts” tab on the top.
3. Click on “Go to cPanel” button under your account type.
4. On the right, locate a sub-section titled “Autoinstallers”, select the WordPress icon.
5. Under WordPress section, click on the blue “Install” tab OR the text link “Install Now”.
6. In this page, fill up the following:

• Software Setup

• Leave “Choose Protocol” as https://, as your site needs to be secure and safe. This is especially true if you are running an ecommerce site in the past. But now, Google has made this a compulsory rule for all websites.
• Choose your Domain to have WordPress installed. If this is your 1st site and 1st time installing WordPress on SiteGround, your newly domain name will be automatically selected. If not, click on the drop down list (arrow pointing downwards on the right) to select which domain you would like to install WordPress.
• In Directory – you would only need to enter this if you are installing to a different folder instead of the root directory.

• Site Settings

• Leave Site Name  as it is OR rename it as you see it fit to your business name or branding.
• Give an interesting Site Description if you can think of one. If not, you can edit it later.

• Admin Account*

• Enter a Username that you like or familiar with, but easy to remember. You should choose something secure. Don’t use “Admin” as your username. Instead, create a username that is a combination of different letters, numbers, and anything else you can use.
• Enter your new password. This is specifically for WordPress login for your domain. Save these 2 piece of info separately in Notepad or other location in case you forget one day.
• *Note that this is different from the SiteGround’s login and password.

Leave the rest as it is, and then just click on the “Install” button.

Voila, you now have a WordPress blog LIVE! You just need to spice things up by working on the design and writing high quality relevant content for your niche market. Enjoy!

If for any reason, after having gone through these steps and you are still lost or in doubt, email me and see if I can help you out. That’s why I wrote this tutorial in the 1st place.

Further helpful tips to help you using WordPress:

Login to your WordPress account

As mentioned earlier, keep your WordPress login details separate from your SiteGround login details. Do NOT get confused with both sets of account logins. Record safely so that you can retrieve them correctly at the right time. A better suggestion will be to use Roboform or any other password software to help record down ALL your passwords under 1 master account. That way, you won’t get stressed out over how many passwords you need to remember in order to login correctly each time.

Create your Posts & Pages

To add relevant and good-quality content, you can add new posts by clicking on WordPress left-hand side menu titled “Posts”. If you need to add a page, you can also assess the left menu to click on “Pages”. The difference between the two is that normally, Posts are for creating your blog content, whereas Pages are used for the pages of the site, such as “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “Terms of Use” and “Shop” pages. By organising content this way, it makes categorizing of content easy to edit and manage. However, there are no hard and fast rules. It is up to you to plan and manage your content.

Change your Appearance of your Site through WordPress Themes

You could just use the default theme given by WordPress. However, you will encounter a lot of limitations in configuring to the way you want in terms of the look and feel of the site. Hence, it may be worth an investment to use premium WordPress themes to give you more control and flexibility, and more varied options to tweak to your hearts’ content. For this site, I am using the Divi theme from Elegant Themes. I like the drag and drop builder and many other features that I can tweak to suit my changing needs over time. Other WordPress themes which you can explore are Themify, MyThemeShop and Themeforest.

Promote your site

To send newsletters or emails to new readers, you may have to use email marketing software. Usually, most of these services come in the form of monthly or yearly subscriptions. It has been found that Email Marketing is the best way to promote one’s products and services in the long run, as it can provide a constant stream of recurring income and profits. Hence, I recommend ConvertKit. It combines simple, elegant sending with the automation and tagging features that you actually need as a professional blogger. One of the famous blogger, Pat Flynn once commented on using ConvertKit:“My favorite part of ConvertKit? Automation rules. Other providers have them but they’re either limited or too overwhelming. ConvertKit makes it simple with a “if this / then that” sequence.”

Jumpstart your learning via further online courses

Now that you have a basic WordPress blog setup, this is just the beginning of your online business. To further expedite the learning process and understanding your niche market, one needs to upgrade by learning further. I would recommend an online course for bloggers, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner. She earns over $50,000 a month through affiliate marketing and she shares her exact strategy and tips in this very informative online course. If you are a blogger (even if you’re a new blogger!), then you NEED this course.

Do you already have a website? Do you use SiteGround for blogging? Share your blogging problems and mistakes here. Hope you have enjoyed this tutorial on How to start a WordPress blog on SiteGround. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated!

Disclosure

Information presented on Peachmorph is intended for informational and educational purposes only and is not meant to be taken as business advice. The views expressed on this website are personal opinions only and should not be construed as expert advice for your given situation. While all attempts are made to present accurate information, it may not be appropriate for your specific circumstances and information may become outdated over time. I am not a business expert and you should seek out a professional before making any business decisions.  Please make sure to do your own due dilligence and seek a trusted business professional before making any financial decisions of your own.

Neither Peachmorph nor its members make any representations as to the validity, accuracy, completeness, or suitability of any claims made here. Neither Peachmorph nor its members assume any liability with regard to business results based on the use of the information provided here. Furthermore, advertisers, commenters, and linked sites are solely responsible for their views and content – which do not necessarily represent the views of Peachmorph or its members.