WordPress Bootcamp: Week One

As promised, here is my WordPress Bootcamp Series.  This series is inspired by your questions and questions I’ve seen many bloggers have over the years and by a desire to convert every user of Blogger to switch to WordPress already.  I have dreams and goals, people.  Actually, if I can help just one person in their quest towards WordPress nirvana, I will consider this series a raging success.

Today, we’re going to start with the basics.  Getting Started.  This particular installment is going to assume that you have already made the decision to move to WordPress (I’ll get to the whining begging pleading convincing at a later date).  But making the decision is only part of the battle.  Where do you go from there?  How do you go from, “I want a WordPress blog!” to actually having a WordPress blog?

Get a Domain Name

It’s pretty simple, actually.  And it starts with a domain name.  Now, some people who use Blogger have a domain name already that is mapped to their Blogger account.  But most do not.  So where do you start?  Well you need to think of a good domain name.  For most people, this is the name of their blog.  Whichever you choose, you need to make sure it’s available.  Most domain name registrars will let you know before purchase if your domain is available with a simple lookup utility.

I use NameCheap because… it’s cheap (hello, it’s in the name!).  It used to be $8.88 a year but it went up like fifty cents or something like that.  Big deal.  So you have your name and you set up an account and you purchase it.  Now what??

Finding a Host

Now you need a host.  You need to find a web host.  Now, a simple Google search will show you that the possibilities are endless.  What do you choose?  What features of a host should you look for?  What should you stay away from?  ACK!  I changed my mind!  I’m scared!

Never fear.  I’m here to help.

I’ve worked with a lot of web hosts in the last several years.  Back when I did blog design, I had the misfortune to work with some really deplorable web hosts, actually.  One thing I can tell you without hesitation?  STAY AWAY FROM YAHOO HOSTING.  It looks so easy.  They promise you easy, no-fuss hosting of your blog.  “Perfect!” you think.  That’s just what you want.  RESIST, I say.  I beg you.  Save yourself the headache, PLEASE.

The problem is that Yahoo Hosting is too easy.  And there are a lot of features that, while they seem to be for advanced users, that having them makes life easier for anyone using WordPress.  And Yahoo doesn’t offer a lot of these features.  So stay away from it.

I use HostGator.  And yes, that is an affiliate link.  Which means I get $$ if you click that link and then sign up for hosting.  I’ve been with HostGator for years now.  I first signed up with them back in 2003.  They are an insanely easy host to work with.  Anyhow, when you sign up, you give them the domain name you registered for before.  They’ll in turn give you some “nameserver addresses”.

You need to go back to wherever you registered your domain name (in my case, NameCheap) and log into your account and find where you can “manage” your domain name.  Then you should find a link somewhere for editing nameserver or DNS information.  If you’re having trouble, ask customer support and they should point you in the right direction.  You put in the new “nameserver addresses” and voila!  You may need to wait a few hours for everything to “catch up” but your domain name will now point to your newly purchased web site!  Woo hoo!

You are also given a “CPanel” with login information.  CPanel looks an awful lot like this:

CPanel lets you do just about anything, easily, to your site.  You can control email addresses, check stats, upload files, add in scripts and gizmos and doo-dads and all sorts of other stuff I don’t even know about.  At the very bottom of the CPanel screen is an icon that is called “Fantastico”.  And fantastic it is.

You see, from here you can pick any of the goodies listed there on the left side and install them on your web site JUST LIKE THAT.  Literally, it’s filling out a few blanks and clicking a button.  It doesn’t get any easier, folks.  You’ve got everything from photo albums to message boards to shopping carts to content management systems and… blogs.  Yes, blogs.  And look what we have here?

Installing WordPress

Woo hoo!  This is how I first learned about WordPress, actually.  I have mentioned before that I started out on Blogger and then switched a few days later to WordPress.  I already had my web site here and I got to looking around at Fantastico.  I checked out the other “blog” programs provided but none of them seemed as good as WordPress.  So I went with that. I knew nothing at the time about Movable Type.  I went with WordPress because it was easy.  SO EASY.

Seriously, this is what it looks like.  In the first blank, if you want your blog to be your domain name, you just leave it blank.  If you want your blog to be at http://yourdomain.com/blog, then you would put “blog” in that blank.  Make sense?  Just make sure the directory doesn’t already exist (which means, don’t make a “folder” or anything else with that name on the account before this step or it won’t work.  If you don’t understand, then don’t worry, it probably won’t apply to you).

Next, you pick out a username and password.  Easy as pie, right?  Just be sure to remember it!  Write it down somewhere and don’t lose it!

In the next section, “Base configuration”, you pick out a nickname.  For instance, if your login username from the previous section was “admin” but you want to sign your posts “Joe Bob”, you would put “Joe Bob” in the nickname spot.  Then you put in an email address.  This could be the email that your web site is tied to or your gmail account or wherever you’d like to receive notices when people make comments, etc and so forth.

Site name and description should be fairly obvious.  For instance, my blog the site name would be “slackermama . com” and the description would be “making little kids cry since 1999″.  Yours could be “Mommy Needs a Time Out” and “going crazy since 2004″ or somesuch.  Make sense?

After you fill all that out, just click “install” and voila!  You get another screen that is basically an “are you sure” sort of screen and you need to click a button to finish the install.  And then you’re done.  You have WordPress!  You are given the URL to your admin account which is basically your domain plus “wp-admin” (for instance: http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin).  Use your newly minted username and password to log in and now you can write posts, add links, manage the design and add plugins and… well, the sky is the limit!

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  All that good stuff is for the weeks to come.  Right now, the important thing is we know how to get started with WordPress.  Next week we’ll learn what to do with it once we have it!  In the meantime, keep the questions coming!

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