11 Easy Steps to Creating Your Own Personal Blog and Domain Name on WordPress and Getting New Visitors

Since launching this blog many of my family and friends have told me that wanted to do something similar. There are many services on the web such as Blogger and Wordpress that offers users free blogging accounts and these accounts are excellent for people who want to try out blogging and are not interested in customization.

The blog you are currently reading right now was setup using Wordpress but as you can see I have it on a personal domain. This post is about creating something similar to this blog.

Real quick I will talk about Blogger and Wordpress.

The upside to using Blogger and Wordpress is that it offers users the ability to get a personal blog up and running real fast but a couple negatives to using a service such as Blogger or Wordpress is that you are limited to using their standard features and that you are going to end up with a domain name such as “yoursite.blogger.com or yoursite.wordpress.com”.

Quick note, in addition to Wordpress’s free hosting services they offer you the ability to use their software for free but host it on your own domain, which is what I am going to show you how to setup.

What I really like about Wordpress is that they have a large open environment of programmers who create free add-on’s which I find very useful. This means if I want my blog to do something for me which I saw on someone else’s blog and I thought was cool, there is a good chance someone has writen a Plugin for Wordpress and with a few clicks of the mouse I could install it with ease. I don’t need to be a hardcore programmer to figure out how to get things to work on here. Most of the stuff has been done for me.

I have found that running a blog with my own domain name and having the ability to customize my blog with all the plug-ins far exceed the benefits the free services offer.

Most people think getting a personal blog like the one I have up and running is a difficult task. You should know that while setting up a personal blog on a custom domain is not as easy as setting up one on a free service I am sure if you follow my directions below you will see that it is really not that hard.

Before you begin, you will need to register a domain name and find a place to host your blog. If you do not have a domain name or a host you can use the same one I use, Dreamhost. For around $8 a month and with nearly unlimited features I highly recommended them. I’ve been a member with them for 6 years and their control panel is very easy to use.

If you decide to not use Dreamhost, just make sure your hosting provider offers you the ability to install Wordpress with 1 click otherwise you will have to install Wordpress manually and that goes beyond the scope of this post. You can find a guide to install Wordpress manually here.

And Now, 11 Steps:

1. Create an account with DreamHost. (Yes, that is my affiliate code attached to this URL, but that’s my little reward for helping you get setup).
2. Upon creating a new account, register a domain name with them. There are other services that allow you to register domain names but I find the convenience of using DreamHost to register my domain and manage my domains for me along with the hosting to be highly convenient.
   

   1. If you already have a domain name registered with another company, then you can keep the domain with them and just point the DNS over to DreamHost or you can use DreamHost’s transfer domain feature to transfer the domain from your host too DreamHost.
   2. Think carefully of your domain name before registering it. This name will become the identity of your blog and what people will need to remember. What I dig about the name ShandyKing is that I only need to tell it to people once and they will remember it.

3. Upon registering your domain name or pointing your existing domain name to DreamHost, you will need to tell DreamHost that you want to host a new domain with them. After creating your account, look under their Manage Domains section where you will find the “add your new domain name”.
   

   1. You will want to use the Fully Hosted function with FTP access.
   2. Create a unique username for your FTP access.
   3. Add “www.” if somebody goes to http://domain.com/

4. Once you hit “Fully Host This Domain”, DreamHost will now setup the new domain for you and this can take a few minutes. So take a break and come back.

Now that you have registered your domain name and told the Host that you want to host that name with them we are now ready to install WordPress. As discussed before, you can follow the manual directions, or use DreamHosts one click feature. I suggest using the one click!

5. Back in your DreamHost administration page, go to Once Click Install under Goodies.
   

   1. What software would you like to install? Select WordPress Weblog.
   2. What URL would you like your software to be installed to? Select the URL of the new domain you setup. If this is not there, then you did not setup your new domain properly with them, so go back a few steps.
   3. Please choose a MySQL database for this software to use: Select create a new database now, give the database a new name and select a new hostname such as wp.mydomain.com. Anything can go here, it does not matter.
   4. The User Name can be the same as your setup above or create a new one. Just keep this information private.
   5. Click “Install Me”.

There you go, in about 10 minutes WordPress will be installed for you. If you go to your domain name with a /wp-admin/install.php you can complete setting up WordPress and configure your personal settings.

Once WordPress has been setup, you will now be ready to start blogging. I recommended checking out the Presentation Tab and changing your theme to something that reflects the personality of your blog. Either way, from this point you can play around with WordPress and check out all the features. You will find that the consol is very easy to use and should not take you much time to get used to.

Now the hard part, getting visitors to your blog!

6. What is nice about blogging with WordPress is that every time you create a new post the software automatically tells all the big blogging services such as Technorati that you have just updated your blog with something new. But typically new blogs seldom register on the radar with these services and you should not rely on traffic from these sources in the beginning.
7. When I created this blog, I added a cool little RSS button on the side bar. This way people who use RSS readers to read their blogs will find my RSS feed easy to find. I’ve been trying Feedburner as method to help gain maximum exposure of my RSS feeds.
8. One great way to get people to start reading your blog and eventually start commenting is to reference other bloggers in your posts. Let us say you have a desire to talk about Hybrid cars. What I would do is check out via Technorati who was recently talking about this topic and I would read up on a few posts. If I agree with anyone of them or feel their point of view will add something to my post I will give them credit by giving them a link. This does two things
   

   1. If their blogging system accepts TrackBacks, then when I link to their post in my article, their site should display the fact I commented on their post. That means readers from that blog may see that I have written something related to the post they are currently reading.
   2. Even if the other persons blog does not display the TrackBack, if the author of the blog checks his stats he might see a referral link from your blog and check it out. If he like what you have written you may have got yourself a new fan.

9. Comment on other people’s sites and use a nickname that people will remember you by. Like I wrote above, one thing I dig about the name ShandyKing is that people will remember seeing it. So no matter whose blog or forum I am on, I will post comments under the name ShandyKing. (I even play poker under that name). My favorite question I get when I am at conferences is, “Whats a ShandyKing”?
10. There are various places you can post articles you have written to get quick exposure such as Digg, and news.netscape.com. I really like StumpleUpon. If people like what you have written, it can send you quick traffic and this also helps with your search engine rankings.
11. If you write it, they will come. Be consistent with your writing and the more you post the more the search engines such as Google will pick you up. The more they pick you up, the more you will start to see your traffic increase from places like Google and Yahoo. Trust me, this works!

Blogging is great and I highly recommend it to you if you have things to talk about. Especially if you’re known among your friends as the guy who likes sends bulk emails on random topics.

Just don’t be disappointed when you don’t see people posting right away. It takes a while and by while I mean months. But if you follow my advice and be cool by commenting on other peoples blogs and using TrackBacks in your posts I promise people will read what you have to say.

I know when people post comments on this blog and they tell me their URL’s when entering the URL field in the comment section, I check out their sites.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 10:02 pm and is filed under SEO / Internet, Shandy Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.