How to Create a Blog - You Have 2 Choices

Before you learn how to create a blog you should be very clear about certain factors.

You have two choices - you can do it yourself or pay someone to do it for you.

However beforehand you will need to consider what it's purpose is for i.e. personal or commercial, what 'platform' you will use and whether you want to 'pay' to get it set up or create it yourself.

Let's just make an assumption that you are going to create a blog for your company but that you want to create the blog yourself as having one created can cost any where from $250 to $25,000 ( depending on complexity and income generation potential)!

The first thing that you will need is access to an internet connection preferably a DSL connection.

The next choice you will have to make is what blogging platform you will use. For example B2Evolution or Wordpress.org. If you are going down the Wordpress route remember that under Wordpress.com's terms and conditions you cannot create a commercial blog from it so stick to the '.org'

Both B2Evolution and Wordpress.org are free platforms - that is the blog engine software is free and is 'open source' therefore being constantly updated. However if you are looking at doing this yourself Wordpress.org is much less complicated to set up and administer than B2Evolution. Both these blogs must be self hosted i.e you will need a hosting account!

Let's just assume that you have opted to set up a Wordpress blog. You will have made a wise choice. Firstly it is the most popular blogging platform chosen by D.I.Y. bloggers and industry professionals.

There are literally thousands of themes (skins - what the blog looks like) and plugins (the functional addons) and most are free.

Additionally if you want something that looks completely different you can have custom made themes designed for as little as $20.

Plugins are a little different though. Depending on what you want the plugin in to to do and if it's available - it may not be free. Having said that though - unless your requirement is very specific it's unlikely that 99% of you will ever have to pay anything!

OK so now you have made the first decision and it's going to be Wordpress. You have to decide on a few things before you start.

Firstly you need to download and activate the blog. This is the tricky bit for 'newbies' (inexperienced computer users) but once you get the hang of it - it becomes very straightforward.

After you've uploaded the blog using an FTP Client (like FileZip or FileZilla - both free). You then need to set up the MySQL database.

You can automate this process using cPanels Fantastico which is the easiest way on how to create a blog or you can try this manually. This is where it gets complicated!

This involves more 'computer' knowledge than most people have but there are other options. There are many videos avaialble that will help you.

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