How to Build a Blog in 3 Simple Steps

The new year is a great time to start a new blog. If you aren’t familiar with the process, it’s difficult to know where to start and what to do. Plenty of advertising and marketing tells you that it’s easy, but if you’ve never started a blog before it can be trial and error before you get it right. To help you avoid some common pitfalls, here are three simple steps you can follow after you decide it’s time for you to start a blog.

1. Choose a Domain Name

This could be one of the easiest steps unless you have a hard time coming up with a name. In some cases, your chosen name can be taken on the .com, but there are so many top-level domains now that you can have an alternative. The best way to identify if your name is available as a .com is to log into a registrar and see if it’s available to purchase.

Your domain name can contain numbers and hyphens as well, so you can occasionally come up with a variant even if you don’t get the exact name that you want.

2. Choose Your Host

ServerPoint is a step above standard hosting. We have true cloud hosting, which means your uptime is guaranteed and it’s faster for your users.

You must choose between dedicated server hosting and VPS. For most blogs, virtual private server (VPS) hosting is sufficient. It’s also cheaper than a dedicated host. VPS is a virtual machine while dedicated hosting means you lease the entire physical machine. Unless you plan to have heavy traffic initially, you can start with VPS and scale up when your blog expands.

3. Install Blog Software

With this step, you have several options. You can install any platform you want, but just remember it’s difficult to change the software once you start to use it.

Just some examples of blogging software include:

• WordPress

• Drupal

• Joomla

There are numerous others, but these three platforms are the most common. The software is installed on your server, and then you might have a learning curve to understand the dashboard and the software mechanics. Take some time to learn the application before you jump in because you must be able to format your content, configure the blog, set up security, and respond to user comments.

After these three steps, you’re ready to get started filling your site with content. Remember a blog is about content, so you need to commit to several posts a week. Most bloggers post at least once a day, but if you’re busy and this is a side project, a few times a week will have to do. Just remember that quality is better than quantity, so a short fantastically written blog post is much better than 10 mediocre posts.

After a while, you will see your blog grow, and what’s even better is that you don’t have to worry about downtime while you’re away as long as you have ServerPoint as your host.