Webupon

It seems that everyone is starting their own blog nowadays. Most choose to develop theirs on either Blogspot (the Google owned website) or Wordpress. Both of these sites are entirely free to use (unless you want to customise your blog a lot) and provide good foundations for developing a blog you eventually intend to become massively popular. For people with more experience (or greater hopes) though, you’ll want to design your own blog on your own domain. To do this, there are a number of steps you will need to carry out first.

Organise Hosting

If you want to host your own website, you’ll need to organise hosting. You can get free hosting, at a variety of sites. Probably the most well-known free hosting site is Webs (formerly known as Freewebs), which you can use completely free of charge. This site is also easy to use for newcomers to web design.
If, however, you’re looking for something a bit more powerful, you’ll need to purchase your own hosting. Luckily, most paid hosting sites come with installers to enable you to automatically install commonly used software (such as Wordpress). One great host for blogs is Hostgator.

Install Blog Software

Once you’ve organised hosting, you’ll need to install the software for your blog on your server. Personally, I feel the best software to install on your server is Wordpress. The advantage to hosting your own Wordpress blog, as opposed to using the Wordpress site, is that you can change the software as much as you please. You are not charged if you want to put ads on the site. You can easily change between themes, by installing them on your server. You can tinker with anything that takes your fancy, without having to risk the wrath of the Wordpress administrators.

Buy a Domain

If you are on paid hosting, it is definitely worthwhile to purchase your own domain name. On sites like Namecheap, you can get a “dot com” domain name for under $10.00 per year! When you’re buying a domain name though, ensure that you don’t buy anything silly or meaningless. Just because you think it is funny, doesn’t mean that other people will. Make sure to put a lot of thought into your domain name purchase. A good name can lead to a lot of growth and readership for your blog.

Of course, there is still a lot more that you will need to do. You will need to regularly update your blog with content. You’ll need to pay your monthly/quarterly/yearly hostage fee and your domain name renewal cost. To do this, you’ll most likely need to have advertisements, such as Google Adsense, on your blog, unless you are so popular that you can sell merchandise, such as mugs/t-shirts, through your blog.