There is a hand full of ways to setup your own blog. The only problem with some of the “Easiest” ways of setting up a blog is that your blog is on someone elses domain name. These providers give you all the tools to setup within just a few minutes, but you are stuck with their domain name. In that situation, to me, you don’t truly own your blog.
If you are serious about starting your own blog, I highly suggest to have your own blog on your own domain name. It will only cost you just under $8 a year for the domain name and under $5 per month for hosting. You can get a cheap domain name and hosting account from GoDaddy.com.
I am going to walk you through one of the easier ways of setting up a custom blog on your own domain. Being bias to GoDaddy, I am going to walk through setting up a WordPress blog with their simple application tool. I am going to assume you already have a domain name and hosting setup with GoDaddy.
Step 1 – Go to “My Hosting Account” and click on “Manage Account” for you domain
Step 2 – Click on the large button that says “Your Applications”
Step 3 – On the left hand side you will see a menu with links such as “Administration Tools”, “Advertising”, and “Blogs”. Click “Blogs” and then “WordPress” which will bring you to a WordPress application summary.
Step 4 – Click the “Install Now” button and select your domain name and click “Continue”. From here you will be able to create a username and password for your database. Don’t be scared away by the term “database”.
Step 5 – You will now have the option of selecting the URL for your domain name. This will either be the URL alone, URL and folder, or in a subdomain. The default will be http://www.yourdomain/wordpress. If you plan on having your domain a blog only, I suggest deleting the word “wordpress” and clicking “Next”. If you have plans having some other type of homepage or already have a website at your main domain, I suggest typing in “blog” and clicking “Next”
Step 6 – Now you have the ability to setup the actual WordPress information. Fill in this form and click “Finish”. You have now setup your blog with GoDaddy.
Let me know if you have any questions, and make sure to follow our Blogging posts. I am also interested to know your domain name and follow your progress. Comment with your blog URL.
