Setting Up WordPress

>>  Setting Up Your First Blog On WordPress.Com 

You may be like me and decide to start blogging on WordPress.Com while sitting in front of the TV at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday night.  🙂 Getting started is super easy, but some of the steps aren’t immediately obvious to the casual user.

This page is a quick guide to get you from setting up your account to your first blog within a few minutes.

OUTLINE:  Here are the topics covered on this page.  Details follow the outline.

  • Part A.  Three Things To Know Before Opening Your Account At WordPress.Com
  • Part B.  Put The “Skin” On Your Brand:  Completing Your Profile, Choosing Themes And Changing Titles
  • Part C.  Writing Content:  Your First Post And About Page
  • Part D.  Promoting Your Site:  Bringing Visitors To Your Blog

——————– 

PART A.  Three Things To Know Before Opening Your Account At WordPress.Com

Getting started is super easy, just fill in the blanks starting at the www.Wordpress.com login screen. 

But, there are three things that you should decide before you start.

  1. Choose your username.  Your username is your login ID and is used to author your posts.  You can’t change it after it is entered, but you CAN change what the public sees.   Make changes later by clicking on <options> then <your profile>. 
  2. Choose your blog domain name.  Your Wordpress blog name (e.g., www.Blogcastgirl.Wordpress.com) can’t be changed after you enter it.  Think ahead and make sure that you can live with your choice before you login.  After creating your account, you can edit what the outside world sees by clicking on <options> then <your profile>. 
  3. Be careful of Word.  If you have planned ahead and written your first post in Word, it may not paste smoothly into WordPress.  Apparently, WordPress.com doesn’t do a good job of translating Word “pastings” into the HTML that is required to make your page look right.  Plan to type your postings directly into the WordPress.com “write” section.  There is a “paste from word” icon in the “advanced” writing tool bar, so I’ll test it and check back.

B.  Put The “Skin” On Your Brand:  Choosing Themes And Changing Titles

It isn’t immediately obvious what your blog looks like and where to begin.  For me, aesthetics count, and I wanted to pick my blog template (called a “theme” in WordPressland), personalize my titles, and make my first post.  Here is a quick guide to first steps.  If you want to know more about the Hows and Whys, scroll later in the post.

OUTLINE FOR PROFILE, THEMES & TITLES:  These are the points in this post.

  1. Change Your Profile 
  2. View Your Blog.
  3. Change Your Titles.
  4. Change Your Theme.

DETAILS 

B-1.  Change Your Profile.  Your profile governs the username, logo/photo/avatar, and other details visible to the outside world.

  • Upload your logo, photo or avatar.  This is your opportunity to really personalize your blog.  Follow the directions and check out the result.
  • Change your username to the outside world.  Fill in your last, first, and nicknames.  Click “update profile”, and wait a few seconds.  Then, on the same screen below “nickname,” choose the name you want others to see from the “display name publicly as” box.  Click “update profile” again to save.

B-2.  View Your Blog. 

  • While you are in the dashboard menu for a specific blog, you can see the title of the blog in the upper left-hand window and a button (View site) right next to it.  When start your blog, it is called “My WebLog,” and you can click the (View site) button to see how it looks.
  • When you view your blog, you’ll see the default theme (at this writing, it is called “Kubrick”).  You can change that later.
  • You’ll notice that you already have a post and comment, compliments of Wordpress.  You can edit or delete them. 

B-3.  Change The Title Of Your Blog.  

  • Options menu:  Fill in your blog title and tagline.  You can always change these, so put SOMETHING in there, scroll down and change any other options that you might want, and then press <Update Options>.
  • View your blog:  After pressing <Update Options>, you can see your new blog title by pressing (View site) in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
  • Taglines:  Themes are covered in the next point, but I have discovered that they don’t show up in all of the standard themes.  If it is important to you, either choose a theme that shows the tagline, or customize an existing one.  If you don’t know HTML, then customization involves hiring someone, so think hard before you get attached to the tagline.  You can always put it somewhere else on the page.

B-4.  Choose Your Theme or Template.  Templates are called “themes” in WordPressland.  They are the skin that the outside world sees when they look at your blog.

  • It is easy to get bogged down choosing a theme or template.  Keep in mind that you can always change it…and experimenting is key at this stage. 
  • You can’t tell what it looks like when you don’t have content.  😉 Since you haven’t written any posts or pages, there is nothing to see in the sample window.  So just pick one and get on with it!!!
  • Choose a template by clicking on the example, waiting for it to load, and clicking on “activate <template name>” in the upper right part of your screen.  Resist the urge to customize at this stage.  Move on to writing your first post.

Part C.  Writing Content:  Your First Post and About Page

C-1.  Write & Edit Your First Post.

  • Write your post.  In the dashboard menu, click on “Write” and then “Write post.”  Name your post, then write a quick note to the world.  Since you are just getting your feet wet, I suggest writing something like, “Hello world!  Check back here for some great information on building your own blogs.”  If you want to write a long post, feel free.  Experiment with the “save and continue editing” button, save, and finally, publish.
  • View your site.  Click on (View site) in the upper left corner.  Notice the previous post from WordPress?  Let’s delete that.  Click on “dashboard” in the upper left and choose your blog name.
  • Edit your post.  Click on “dashboard” and you’ll see a history of your posts.  Scroll down to the WordPress post and click on (edit).  Once the post is open, scroll down to the bottom and see where it says, “delete this post.”  Do it.  The comment will be deleted at the same time.

C-2:  Edit Your “About” Page.

Last, but not least, it is time to edit your “About” page.  This is your opportunity to tell people about the author of your blog:  you and/or your company. 

  • Since the “about” page already exists courtesy of WordPress.com, you only need to edit it. 
  • From the dashboard menu, click on “dashboard”.
  • Scroll down to the “about” page listing.  Click (edit).
  • Make changes and publish.

Part D.  Promoting Your Site:  Bringing Visitors To Your Blog

If a tree falls in a forest, and there is no one around with ears, does it make a sound?

  • Well, blogging works the same way.  If you don’t promote it, no one will know it is there.  Driving traffic (aka visitors) to your site is more art than science, but you can start by inviting your target customers to take a look and comment.
  • Invitations will get you the experience of first comments, but to gain access to a larger audience, you are going to have to mount a permanent promotional campaign that enables the right people to find you. 
  • This is where SEO (search engine optimization) and a whole slew of other TLAs (three-letter acronyms) come into play.  You may want to learn to do this yourself, or you may want to hire someone.  Either way, if your plan is to have a large, national audience, you will need to promote your blog in a variety of ways.
  • Stay tuned for more insite into how to send traffic to your blog.

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