Step By Step Guide to Create Self Hosted blog on WordPress

If you are passionate about blogging or if you want to become a professional blogger like me or you have a business and you want to create a blog to market it then you must create your blog as a Self Hosted blog.

Self-Hosted blogs are those blogs in which you will get blogging platform for free but you need to buy a domain name and find Hosting provider for your blog on your own. The blogging platform for Self Hosted blogs are called Stand-alone blogging platform.

To know more about the advantages of Stand-alone blogging platform read this post on choosing a blogging platform for your blog.

If you are serious about blogging then I recommend you to go for Self Hosted Blog. Self-Hosted Blogs have many advantages over Free Blogs. Here is the list of few of them.

• Full control over the designing of your blog. You can either custom design your blog or can choose desired themes from thousands of available theme options.
• Have options to update you blog with latest plugins which enhances blog quality.
• You will have the freedom to choose your domain name. It will not have blogging platform provider domain name in it. So, you will have more professional looking domain name.
• You will get blogging platform for free.

Now that you know the advantages of Self Hosted blog and if fits your requirements then you can choose to create Self Hosted Blog.

Here are the steps that you need to follow to create a Self Hosted blog on wordpress.org.

• Buy a Domain Name
• Choose a Good Hosting Provider and setup your Hosting account.
• Install word-press on your Hosting provider server and associate your domain name with your blog account.
• Choose theme for your blog, customize theme and configure some essential settings.
• Create and publish your first post on your Self Hosted blog.

1. Buy a Domain name

If you have not bought a domain name of you blog yet then it’s good for you because in the second step I will show you how easily you can have a new domain name from your Hosting Provider. It will also less expensive.

If you have bought a Domain name already then you need to follow some extra steps to create a Self Hosted blog. I will cover those steps later in this post.

2. Choose a Good Hosting Provider and setup your Hosting account

Here I recommend you to choose BlueHost as your Hosting Provider. BlueHost is very easy to use, provides good customer support and reliable. WordPress also officially recommends BlueHost as the best hosting provider to their users. I personally use BlueHost for this blog. According to my experience BlueHost is the best hosting provider you can have for your blog.

BlueHost cost is also very reasonable. It charges $3.95 to $6.95 per month for shared hosting. It will be cheaper if you buy hosting for a year or more.

Setting up BlueHost Hosting is very simple. Here are the steps you should follow to set up your hosting in BlueHost.

• Go to bluehost.com and click on Sign up Now button.

• You will be redirected to Sign up Now Page. Here if you don’t have a domain name you can find out the availability of your desired domain name here. Write your desired domain name in the Enter Domain name section; choose desired extension (.com, .net, .biz etc.) and click on next button.

If your desired domain name is available then you will be directly redirected to Account signup page otherwise you will be shown the list available domain name similar to your desired domain name and you can choose any one of them after that you will be redirected to Account signup page.

• On Account Signup page you need to fill out registration details which involve your personal information (name, address, country, and mobile number), the hosting package you want to buy and your credit card information for billing purpose. Click on next button after filling your details.

• On Next button click you will be shown the Congratulation message that you have successfully purchased hosting of your blog. You will also get a confirmation email from bluehost. Here you will be asked to create secure password.

• Create secure password and login into your BlueHost account with your domain name and password. After login click on cPanel link on your home screen.

3. Install word-press on your Hosting provider server and associate your domain name with your blog account.

• Go to Site Builder section on cPanel and click on WordPress link there.

• In the next screen you again need to click WordPress link.

• On the next page you will be asked to click on Install button to start wordpress installation on your Server.

• In the next screen you will be asked to fill your installation preferences.

a) Select the latest version of wordpress to install.

b) You will be asked to give the path where you want to install wordpress. I recommend leaving blank after the domain name here as this is your first website on BlueHost and doing this will install the wordpress at the root directory.

c) Fill your blog title in the Site Name or Title section. You can change it later as well.

d) Fill your desired username and password. Write complicated password for extra security.

e) Uncheck the check-boxes of plugins.

f) Accept the terms and conditions and hit Complete button.

You might get error when you hit Complete after the above step. The error says that “Oops! Directory exists! Are you sure you want to overwrite its contents”. You should not get panic with this error as this is the warning for those users who already have content on the specified installation path. You are the new user who is creating a first website on your account hence you don’t have to worry about this warning.

To overcome this error select the check box which says “Directory Exists! I understand that continuing will overwrite files”, fill other details again and hit complete button.

 

• After completing this stage you will see installation progress screen. After the installation is completed you will see installation confirmation screen where you will be shown you blog URL, Your WordPress login URL and your user name and password to login into WordPress. Note down this information and keep it very safe.

• Now click on your wordpress login URL. Login with your username and password.

• You will be forwarded to wordpress dashboard home screen.

4. Choose theme for your blog, customize theme and configure some essential settings

• Now you need to install new theme for your blog. Click on Appearance → Themes and choose your desired theme from thousands of available free themes. You can always change your theme later or buy a premium theme any time you want to.

• Choose a theme; Click on Install Now link and that theme will be installed on your blog.

• Customize your blog by changing background color, Header text, Header Image, Footer Text and Footer Image.

• Change configuration setting of your blog by going to Setting option of dashboard to change your blog setting according to your needs.

5. Create and publish your first post on your Self Hosted blog

• Click on Posts → Add New to create new post. Write your post and click on Publish button to publish your first post.

Congratulations, you have created your Self hosted blog and have written your first post here.

Now as I have promised you that I will tell you steps to set up hosting if you have already registered your domain name.

The first thing you will need to do is to point your domain name to the BlueHost servers. The process will vary depending on where you have registered it.

For example if you have your domain registered with GoDaddy then here is the process to point your domain name to bluehost server.

• Log in to your GoDaddy account, then go to Domains -> Domain Management screen:

• Here click on the domain name you want to point to BlueHost. It will open “Domain Details” page. Scroll down to the bottom-left of the page. You will see a section called “Nameservers”:

Here Click on Set Nameservers. It will open a new screen.

• Enter ns1.bluehost.com in the field for Nameserver 1.
• Enter ns2.bluehost.com in the field for Nameserver 2.

Congratulations you have just completed the process of pointing domain name to bluehost. Click OK and log out. It typically takes 24–48 hours for these changes to take effect. If you are lucky then it might start working in an hour or two.

So, after setting this up and then waiting for some time, you can start the process of setting up your Self Hosted WordPress blog. Here In Step number 2, after you click Sign Up Now, you will need to enter your domain name in the right-most box that says, “I Have a Domain Name.”

Now click the next button. All other steps should be same as like I have told you while setting up hosting with new domain name.