Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Internet and Online Business – Creating a Wordpress Blog in 3 Easy Steps



Creating a Wordpress blog is generally a three-step process; and you would find it beneficial to do that as soon as you can. One of the best sources of traffic for your online business is blogging. Unlike your business website which can more or less remain static, your blog can be updated daily, even hourly, with fresh content. This makes blogging the best way to regularly update niche related content. Besides, regular updates increase your chances of being indexed often by search engine bots. Wordpress in particular is a powerful internet marketing tool that is also easy to use.




Step #1 Create a Checklist.

You need to come up with a domain name and get your hands on resources from the Wordpress site. Get the applications you'll need ready; a text editor such as notepad and the browser of your choice. Check if your PHP and SQL versions meet minimum requirements (4.3 for PHP and 4.1.2 for mySQL). Check web hosting requirements and get the ftp client software ready. Make a draft of the pages you want. You can even setup a website wire frame. You will also want to add a contact page or an about-the-blogger section.

Step #2 Install.

Download the latest version of Wordpress. This is usually a compressed file so you would need to unzip it to a folder on your hard drive. If you are using a web hosting service provider, you may have to setup a Wordpress database. Sometimes, a Wordpress database was already setup; at times, it can be done automatically; check the web hosting service provider's support pages and your control panel for more information about this. Then, you will have to upload the files to the directory of choice, either in a root directory or a sub directory. Next, you need to run the installation script to input database information.

Step #3 Customize.

One of the best things about creating a Wordpress blog is that win addition to its being ease to use, it is also an advanced tool that you can customize to your heart's content. You can make changes via the administration user interface. If you know HTML, XHTML and CSS, you can create your own themes from scratch. You can still use pre-designed templates or modify them if you aren't that much of an expert.

Creating a Wordpress blog is not at all hard, even for the blogging newbie; and seeing that it is a user-friendly tool that can easily be the blogger's best friend, there is no reason why you should put off creating one now. You can even just sign up for an account at the Wordpress blogging network and use their ready made templates.