How to create a wordpress.com blog

Guidelines in how to create a Wordpress.com blog from scratch, including choosing the best name and getting a presence up on-line.

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Click on the button to download a pdf of this page.

First, a glossary (important = read it to understand this e-course fully):

Blog = an online diary that can be adapted for business purposes. Advantages are: interaction, self-editable and more frequently visited by search engines.

Post = an entry, article, piece of writing or message in your blog.

Wordpress.com = the recommended blog programme software provider I’m using for ‘free’ blogs.

Domain name or URL = the web address of your blog or website.

Internet Spiders = robots that search the internet looking for keywords and new material to help with SEO.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) = improving organic or natural search engine results using spiders.

Interaction = the ability to contribute or comment on the internet via blogs and forums.

Username = your ‘name’ you wish to be known as, and can be the main element of your blog’s URL.

Password = specially created by you to gain personal access to a blog.

Keywords = words that are currently being searched for in search engines and are therefore attractive to internet spiders.

Permalink = each posts’ own specific URL created from its headline or title.

Today we are looking how to create a Wordpress blog created from http://wordpress.com. This means that this is a blog that is created from free software provided by Wordpress that allows you to create a blog quickly and easily on the internet. (There are other blog providers that also look and perform similarly.)

You can recognise that your blog is ‘free’ through its URL or domain name. It will probably look like this: http://username.wordpress.com. Note there is no www. after http:// – this is a feature of blogs, due to the programming language used which makes your blog interactive.

Advice about creating a ‘username’ = this becomes the title of your blog, and the first reaction would be to copy the name of your business. I did this with my first blog: http://alicedesigns.wordpress.com because my business was called Alice Designs. The disadvantages are that this URL isn’t very useful for SEO reasons.

Using keywords = it’s advisable your URL should contain keywords that best reflect your business, for example, http://weddingorganiserwiltshire.wordpress.com and then create your business name Belinda’s Wedding Services as the title of your blog.

The last part of the URL contains .wordpress.com which shows Wordpress has provided the software for this blog. This isn’t brilliant for SEO purposes, hence why it’s important to make your username keyword friendly.

Right, let’s get started! Go to http://wordpress.com and sign up for a blog:

The next stage is to choose your URL, or rather username. As I explained above, don’t fall for the trap of thinking your blog needs to be the same as your business. Think about it – how well known are you to the rest of the world? If you were to mention your business name in another county, how many people would recognise it?

Think how an internet spider works, who would be searching for keywords. Make your blog’s URL keyword orientated so it can be found more easily. You can name and beautify your blog later to publicise your business name, but your URL cannot be changed once it’s created.

Wordpress will tell you if your username is already in existence by someone else. If it is, keep adapting it with your keywords until you find a unique one.

Remember this blog domain will become your username, and will be the username for any other blogs you create too, even if they have different URLs.

The blog title here can be your business name, eg Belinda’s Wedding Services blog if you so wish it. Note you can change this whenever you wish, but the domain cannot be changed once approved.

Definitely keep the privacy box ticked – unless you don’t want your blog to be read by anybody uninvited.

Click ‘Create Blog’!

Congratulations, you have a Wordpress blog!

Next will be to create a password. Wordpress gives guidelines with creating passwords, and adding numbers and other symbols will help, but make sure yours is rememberable.

Now log in with your new username and password.

You can always access this login box through:

http://wordpress.com/wp-login.php

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Once completed, the next thing you’ll see is the Dashboard:

This is basically the hub or main menu where you can control your blog and start doing things. Don’t worry about all the stuff on the left sidebar, I have two visual e-courses called ‘Understanding the main dashboard’ and ‘Setting the dashboard settings’ to provide information on this.

Let’s have a look at the basic bits you need to know.

Look at the top of your blog, just under the browser information and above the title of your blog, and you’ll see some grey links called My Account | My Dashboard | New Post – these are quick links visible when you are looking at your blog on-line and you’re logged in to Wordpress.

On your dashboard you can see how many posts, pages, categories, tags, and comments you have, and which comments have been approved, are pending and spam. You already have an application (called a ‘plugin’) installed by Wordpress called Akismet which sorts out spam for you.

You can change your theme, or how your blog looks, here too. I have a specific visual e-course called ‘Creating a visual identity’ which will give you guidelines in this.

There is a ‘quick press’ option to create a post, but it is only for very quick posting with no extras or add-ons suitable for SEO. I have a visual e-course called ‘Writing posts’ that can help you with this.

Now let’s have a look at what your new blog looks like by clicking where it says ‘Visit Site’ which is located next to your blog’s name in the black banner (see example above) – very good for checking you’ve got everything right! Return by the back button to the dashboard to continue.

Right, you have Wordpress’s basic theme (how it looks) with a title, a sub-title, a post (and a comment) and a rudimentary sidebar with some basic widgets (these are special blog programmes for your sidebar) added on. This proves your blog is now LIVE!

Note you still have access to the grey links My Account | My Dashboard | New Post at the very top for easy access to working on your blog.

You also can see the URL http://settingupablog.wordpress.com and the blog title ‘How to set up a blog’ at the top of your internet browser.

The blog title is in large letters. This can be changed to whatever you want, especially for SEO purposes, as so can the sub-title ‘Just another Wordpress.com weblog’ underneath. My visual e-courses ‘Setting the dashboard settings’ and ‘Creating a visual identity’ will give you guidelines in this. This information is also picked up by the internet spiders as part of their SEO activities.

The first post and comment are already created by Wordpress as an example. They can easily be edited to whatever you want, or deleted if appropriate once you’ve created another one that’s more suitable. See my visual e-course ‘Writing posts’ that can help you with this.

The right sidebar shows there is:

an additional page called ‘About’ (information on pages can be got from my visual e-course ‘Creating pages’). You can edit this later.

An archive of one post so far (this one was created in April 2009) – this will automatically be updated once you start creating posts.

One category called ‘uncategorized’ – more information on what this is can be found in my visual e-course ‘Creating categories and tags’.

A blogroll, which is where you can list links to any important websites such as your business or other relevant resources.

A meta widget which provides you wish quick access to various ‘behind the scenes’ activities.

If we go to the About page already created for you:

You’ll see that it looks almost the same, except the content has changed. Making separate static pages (pages that don’t host the blog posts) are excellent for providing extra information for your readers. It has its own URL http://settingupablog.wordpress.com/about/ and note there is no need to put anything extra on the end like .html or .php

There is also an opportunity for your readers to comment. This is a vital element of blogs, as interaction between your visitors and your blog is essential for SEO, as it creates more links to other blogs or websites, and the feedback can be very useful to your business. The details of the commenter’s link are shown in the comment box on the example below.

Each post when created has its own page allocated to it, with its own URL or permalink: http://settingupablog.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/hello-world/ – see example below. Here you can see when the post was created by the date. The structure of permalinks can be adapted through the Dashboard – see my visual e-courses ‘Understanding the main dashboard’ and ‘Setting the dashboard settings’ to provide extra information on this.

Having a unique permalink for posts means you can direct visitors straight to specific posts, useful if it was created some months ago and is no longer visible on the homepage. All new posts are archived in various pages throughout the blog, and are accessible through their permalinks.

The permalink’s URL itself is important due to the title of the post, which should be stuffed full of keywords to encourage SEO as well as attract potential readers. More information on this can be obtained from my visual e-course ‘Writing posts’.

Want to know more?

More information can be obtained through my ‘Make a Blog’ visual e-courses, or browse through my other business blogging pages. And if you have any questions, click on the fairy blog mother logo to email me.