In the beginning, there was Blogger.
Blogger was very, very good to a nervous newbie. Everything was provided, the themes were pretty, the interface was reasonably quick and easy to learn.
But as time went on, the little blogger grew up and got impatient with the limitations of the sandbox. So, because I’d been listening to people like Dean Dwyer, David Wood and Chris Brogan about being brave, I made the huge leap to a self-hosted WordPress blog. I made the commitment to pay actual money to Bluehost (affiliate link). They have excellent videos on their site to teach you how to upload WordPress to your new site, so I’m not going to repeat that here.
To begin with, I chose one of their free themes – SmallBiz Lite from Expand2Web. If your primary focus is blogging rather than a small business, you might want to choose Twenty Twelve instead.
I should make it clear that this is just what I’ve done. You don’t have to pay money for self-hosting to use WordPress – in fact, most people who use WordPress start off on WordPress.com, which is the equivalent of Blogger – comfortable but limited.
Actually, the book I am planning to follow, Web Designer’s Guide to WordPress: Plan, Theme, Build, Launch (Voices That Matter)
I am currently in the throes of hell trying to get the above to work. WAMP seems to be working and made my database, but WordPress can’t find it. I’m going to post this now and talk to my gurus … then I can teach you how to avoid spending the entire afternoon like I just did!
Thanks, Daniel! I only just saw this as I’ve been busy torturing myself. Yes, that plugin could be useful for my real site, thanks. I do like the idea of being able to work offline, though. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Hadass Eviatar recently posted…Success!!
FYI, I’m using a modification of the “Fresh Ink Magazine” theme on mine. I’ve played with the style, and a few of the aspects of the theme itself, a bit. I haven’t done the trick of working on my own computer, but I’m not making major changes. I do occasionally do a backup — there is a plugin that allows you to zip your entire blog and database and save it to your local computer. Let me know if you want the name.
Daniel – Cahwyguy recently posted…Technological Innovations and its Impact on Digital Music