How to Set Up Your WordPress Blog

This article is going to show you how to set up a WordPress blog. Before setting up WordPress and starting blogging, you will need to register a domain name and find a hosting plan. That might sound obvious to most of you but I want to make sure to be as clear as possible for beginners.

In my last article, I suggested you use DreamHost for several reasons. I use this hosting company and have been very satisfied with them. For the purpose of this article, I will assume that your domain name is registered with GoDaddy and that your host is DreamHost. If you have a different domain registrar and host, steps would be somewhat similar.

Adding A Domain Name to Your Hosting Account

First things first, we have to add your domain name to your hosting account. We are going to tell your hosting company that we want to host your domain name on their servers. By doing so, we are going to create some space on your server so you can install WordPress (or whatever you want for that matter).

1. Log in to your DreamHost panel.
2. Go to Manage Domains.
3. Click Add New Domain / Sub-Domain.
4. Under Domain to Host, enter your domain name.
5. Don’t touch any other settings.
6. Click Fully host this domain to finish the set up.

If successful, you should see the following message:

See the note about nameservers on this image? That’s the next step in setting up your WordPress blog.

Changing the Name Servers

Every time you use a domain name, you use the internet’s Domain Name Servers (also known as DNS) to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable address. In other words, a DNS is the location of your domain name on the web.

Consider your DNS as your internet address. You have to give this address to your domain registrar so it knows where to send people when they access the domain. I don’t want to be too confusing here so check out this great explanation of what DNS are.

1. Log in to your GoDaddy account (or whererver your domain is registered).
2. Select Domain Manager.
3. You should see a list of your domains. Select the domain for which you want to change the DNS information.
4. Look for DNS or Nameservers in the menu.
5. Select I host my domains with another provider.
6. Then enter the information for nameservers 1, 2, and 3 (NS1.DREAMHOST.COM, NS2.DREAMHOST.COM, NS3.DREAMHOST.COM)
7. Done!

How to Install WordPress

We are almost done. Now we need to install WordPress on your server. This is actually pretty easy because DreamHost offers a “one-click install” service for this.

1. Go back to your DreamHost web panel.
2. In the sidebar, under Goodies, select One-Click Installs.
3. Select Install New Website Software – Advanced Mode.
4. Several options will be offered to you. Click on WordPress (it should be selected by default).
5. Under Install To, select the domain name for which you want to install WordPress. If you have only one domain name, it will be selected by default.
6. Do not touch the other settings.
7. Click Install it for me now!
8. Done!

You should now see this message on your DreamHost panel:

You should also receive an email with instructions to finalize the set up. In this email, click on the very first link. That will take you to the backend of your new blog. From there, simply enter the name of your blog and your email address, then click Install WordPress.

This will create a default Admin username and will generate a random password for you. This information will be emailed to you as well.

Now login using the information that was provided to you. I suggest to change the automatically generated password right away so you can set it to something you will remember.

That’s it! Congratulations, you have successfully set up a WordPress blog. In future articles, I will teach you how to configure your blog efficiently, install themes and plugins.

In the meanwhile, feel free to leave a comment below. Also, if you like this article please make sure to share it on Twitter and to subscribe to my RSS feed.