David Kurniawan

Nowadays there are many people having their own blogs, some use the "free" blogging platform and others use the "paid" one. "Paid" means they register their own desired domain names and host their blogs in their subscribed hosting company.

Whereas the "free" version may be good enough for some people, there are usually some restrictions applied due to their "free" status. One thing for sure is that by using the "free" version, they cannot use their own domain names, since the blog names will become subdomain names (e.g: http://blogname.wordpress.com or http://blogname.blogspot.com)

For those who wants to create a blog on their own desired domain names, they need to use the "paid" method. If you need a clear and thorough instruction on how to setup your own blog, you can read it here. I myself follow the instruction there to setup this blog, and will surely recommend that to other people too.

Of course you also need to play around a bit with the blog settings and other stuffs by yourself, but it is necessary if you want to create yourself a nice blog. For me, the longest time spent when looking for the blog template, but again just take it as a long term time investment. Rather than change your blog template later and have to adjust the blog settings again, it’s better to find the suitable template from the start.

To summarize this, below are the steps for creating your own WP blog:

1. Find a suitable domain name, you can find here, through the domain registrars or even on the domain aftermarket / marketplace if you want (you can find them on the sidebar)

2. Subscribe to a reliable hosting company, for me, I use HostGator

3. Download the FTP (e.g Filezilla, which is free to use) program to upload your file to your hosting

4. Find a suitable WP theme for your blog, you can find it here

5. Find suitable plugins for your blog

6. Play around with your blog settings

7. Start posting on you blog (you can also do this first before playing round with the settings)

Tips: when you create the email address corresponding to your domain name, don’t forget to direct the incoming emails to to your other email address which you use most frequently. This is to minimize the unread emails sent to your domain email.

If you have any questions regarding the blog setup, you can just contact me. I will try to assist you and hopefully you can have yourself a nice blog (or blogs) too.