For our first Good Blog Project, the Tots100 will be helping parent bloggers wanting to make the move to self-hosting. Making the move to self-hosted WordPress is something that lots of bloggers consider at one time or another.
Why? Self-hosting lets you host ads. You have a lot more freedom and choice in terms of design. You have access to an enormous library of software plug-ins created by the WordPress community, making tasks like SEO, customised designs and making money considerably easier.
But self-hosting can seem scary. Which is where the Good Blog Project comes in. Over the next 10 weeks we’ll take you, step by step, through everything you need to know to get started with WordPress – and make the very most of your WordPress blog once you’re up and running.
Our aim here is to provide you with tools, and not to be prescriptive – if something else works better for you, feel free to tweak our advice. If you have suggestions for improvements or additions, please share your thoughts in the comments, and help this to become an even better resource for Tots100 bloggers. So, where shall we start?
Week 1: Setting up and getting online
This week, we’re kicking off with the very basics. How do I get my WordPress blog started? Follow our step-by-step guide and you can be up and running on WordPress in just one hour.
- Buy a Domain
If you’ve been blogging on Blogspot.com or WordPress.com you might be blogging at something like www.goodblogproject.blogspot.com. It’s more professional and easier for people to understand if your blog is at www.goodblogproject.com – most people who don’t blog have no idea what Blogspot or WordPress is, for starters.
So you need to buy your own web address, also known as a domain (sometimes called a vanity URL). Having your own domain also gives you future freedom – if you want to move sites, or providers, you can always take your domain with you in future.
And you can have a portable email address, too – sarah@goodblogproject.com looks better than sarah.s.smith@btopenworld.com.
Go to a site like 123-reg.co.uk and you’ll be able to search for domains and see what’s available for purchase. Think carefully about your blog name – with a bit of luck, you’ll be using it for a LONG time, so buy something that will still suit you a year or two down the line.
When you find a domain you like, you can buy the domain with various extensions – .com and .co.uk are the most common. We suggest buying both, to reduce the odds of someone setting up a site in future that could be confused with yours.
Your domain shouldn’t cost more than £20 for two years if you buy both .com and .co.uk. If you hunt around, it’s possible to buy domains even cheaper than that. If you’re likely to only run one or two domains, we strongly advise buying your domain from your hosting company. It will make life a LOT easier.
2. Buy Hosting
Once you have a website address, you need a bit of internet real-estate for your blog to sit on. Hosting companies provide space on their servers for your blog, and should offer additional services like back-up and support, in exchange for an annual fee – typically hosting will cost between £15 and £50 per year. We like TSOHost, which will register a domain for you, or allow you to point hosting at a domain registered elsewhere.
A basic hosting package is enough for most bloggers – if you have a choice between hosting on a Windows and Linux server, opt for Linux.
To make life easier, look for a hosting company that offers something called 1-click-apps or Softaculous. This means the host has a version of WordPress on its site that you can install very easily just by clicking on a WordPress logo – without having to download and upload the WordPress software yourself.
3. Install WordPress
Once you have hosting, you’ll want to go into your hosting company’s 1-click/Softaculous section (this will be in the cpanel or control panel) and select ‘install WordPress’. The software will usually ask you some basic questions, like:
- Do you want your new blog to have a www in the address or not? (depends on your preference)
- What will the title of your blog be?
- Will your blog have a strapline, or slogan?
- Do you want your blog to sit at the home page of the domain or at domain.com/blog?
- What will be the user name and password to log into your blog (different to the details to log into your hosting account)
Once this is all done, click ‘install’ and WordPress will be installed onto your new hosting. Simple!
If your preferred hosting company doesn’t do 1-click, things are a bit more complicated but not impossible. You’ll need to download WordPress from the WordPress site, then upload it to your hosting space via something called FTP.
This sounds scary but is really just like ‘Windows Explorer’ on your PC – you’ll be given a special user ID and password to log-in to a specific website, where FTP lets you see all the files and folders on your hosting space, and you can upload new ones.
4. Move your existing blog content
If you already have a blog, you’ll probably want to move the content over from your old site to your new, self-hosted site.
If you’re using WordPress.com this is very simple. Simply log into your dashboard on your old blog and select ‘Tools’ then ‘Export’. This will export all of your blog content, comments, pictures and so on into a file on your computer.
In Blogger, you need to select ‘settings’, ‘other’ and then ‘export’.
On self-hosted WordPress, there are plug-ins (small software programs) to help get your content from Blogger, Typepad or WordPress.com onto your new site. Log into your new blog and select ‘Plugins’ and ‘add new’ then search for ‘blogger import tool’ or ‘wordpress.com import tool’.
Once you find the plug-in, install and activate it by following the on-screen instructions.
Once this is done, go to ‘tools’ and ‘import’ then upload the file you saved on your computer of your old blog content.
5. Get your new site online
Once you have a blog, and content, you need to ensure the web address you bought directs visitors to your new blog. If you buy hosting and domains from the same company, this will be done for you – but if not, you need to think about something called ‘name servers’.
Your hosting company will send you a welcome email with details of your account and this will include details of ‘name servers’ – the addresses of the computers where your website will be hosted.
You will need to go into your account at the domain company and there will be an option called something like ‘DNS settings’, ‘change name servers’ or sometimes ‘manage my domain’. You’ll need to change the default name servers (which will probably include some reference to the domain company, like ns1.yourdomainco.com) to the name servers in your email from your hosting company. Once you’ve done this, click save and you’re all done.
Don’t panic if your domain doesn’t IMMEDIATELY point to your new website. It can take 48 hours for all the various ISPs to update their systems to include your new website. This will feel like a month, but there’s no short-cut, unfortunately.
6. Redirect your old blog to your new blog
Chances are, there are lots of links on the Internet pointing at posts on your old blog. You don’t want those to suddenly stop working. So you need to redirect those links and ensure anyone visiting them ends up on the right post on your new site.
If your old blog was on WordPress.com then you can pay a small amount (around £12) for a redirect that will redirect all your old posts to your new posts. It’s very simple, and works very well. If your old blog was on Blogger, there are plug-ins on your new WordPress site that will redirect traffic from your old posts to new posts.
7. Get started!
So now you have a domain that points to your new WordPress blog, which contains all your posts, comments and pictures (although be warned, moving pictures from WordPress.com to WordPress.org can be a bit shaky). It’s time to start customising the look and feel of your WordPress blog – come back next week for the second instalment in The Good Blog Project.
Want to know more?
- A PDF with detailed instructions and screen shots of this tutorial will be available for download in your Tots100 account from Monday morning – just check the eBook section for details.
- We have also provided a quick seven minute video demonstrating all the steps above – click below, or double click to watch at YouTube.
- Check back on the Tots100 site next week and we’ll be taking you through adding themes, customising the look of your blog and setting up analytics and reporting.
About Sally
Sally Whittle is founder of the Tots100, Foodies100, BlogSummit and the MAD Blog Awards. When she's not working, she can be found blogging at Who's the Mummy, or having fun with her 7 year old daughter, Flea.
Brilliant! This series couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I moved my blog to self-hosting and have got it looking pretty much how I want it now, all very successful.
But the reality hit that you can’t be like the greedy kid in the sweetshop with plug-ins and that SEO is a minefield and that things I took for granted on WP.com – community, Publicize to name two – are now things I sorely miss.
If I make any amazing discoveries as I learn I will be sure to share them on here!!
Looking forward to week 2.
Thank you!
I am still baffled I’m afraid – I’ve decided there is absolutley no such thing as a “beginners” guide to ANYTHING when it comes to blogging. There’s always an assumption you know what the jargon means and I aint a clue.
Hi Minty
We have tried very hard to keep the post and the video as jargon free as possible. What is it you don’t understand? We’re happy to advise.
If it helps, when you set up a blog, it’s really just a website. And your website has to sit on a computer where other Internet users can access it. You don’t want thousands of visitors connecting to your own personal computer!
When you start blogging, it’s often easiest to use a free blog software such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com. If you set up a blog using those services, your site will use software and sit on a computer owned by WordPress or Google (which owns Blogger). You know this because your blog address will be something like myblog.blogspot.com or myblog.wordpress.com
That’s great for new bloggers, because you don’t have to worry about the software or whether it’s up and running – it’s someone else’s job.
But having your blog on someone else’s computer is a bit like renting a house – the landlord (WordPress or Google) gets the final say on how you decorate and what you can do. As you get more experienced with blogging (and more opinionated) you might start to get irritated at someone else being in charge of your stuff!
That’s when people start to think, hey, I don’t want my blog sitting on Google’s computers any more. I want to be in charge of my own blog, thanks.
Self-hosting is just a bit like buying your own patch of land on the Internet for your website to sit on. You go to a hosting company and, in return for an annual fee, they give you a bit of space on their computers to put your website. You’re paying for the space, but a hosting company will also do things like back-up your site so you have a copy in case something goes wrong.
So, if you want to go self-hosted, the first thing you do is buy that hosting space. Just go to a hosting company website – TSO is very good – and buy their cheapest package.
The second thing you need is an Internet address. Now you’re moving away from WordPress or Blogger, you can’t have that blogspot.com or wordpress.com address for your site any more. You need to buy your own website address. A website address is properly known as a domain and includes a word followed by something like .com or co.uk.
Once you have hosting and have a domain you need to ‘point’ your domain to your hosting. This sounds technical but it’s really just about logging into the account you created when you bought your domain, and filling in the details of ‘name server’ that will have been given to you when you bought your hosting. If you’re lucky, your hosting company will do this for you, though
What this tutorial does, then, is basically walk you through those four basic steps: buying a domain, buying hosting, putting WordPress onto your hosting, and then connecting it all together.
Does that help?
Hi Sally,
Great tutorial- thank you!
I am slowing making the transition from Blogger to WordPress. I’ve got the Blog on WordPress on a temprary domain name and have got it looking exactly as I want. I’ve held back whilst voting is open for the MADS as don’t want to risk losing everything!!
However, I’m going to do it in the next couple of weeks. I wondered if you could help answer a couple of things? I have my Blogger Blog currently on http://www.bizzymumsblog.com and want to transfer that over. I get how to point the domain, but what will my old blog then become? Should I revert back to my blogspot address? At what stage should I do that?
Will the redirection then still work? I’m struggling to get my head around how the bots will know where to go!!
Also what do I do with my blogger Blog as surely there will be duplicate content on a blogspot address and new Bizzy Mum site? or is this where redirection takes care of that. I fear I’ll have a lot of work to do once transfered as I have a number of categories to sort into as well.
Tell me it’ll be ok. Know it sounds daft, but after just getting Page Rank, don’t want to risk anything going wrong!!
Thanks again for a great tutorial
Just wanted to pop along and thank you for this fab tutorial, it’s been a great help for me in setting up my wordpress blog.
I also wanted to say I have found tsohost really good – they’ve given me really good support when my redirection plugin wiped out almost all my blog! They do automatic backups and have managed to restore it, thank goodness! (Tears were involved – mine, not their’s…)