How to start a blog off in style

Want to start a blog? Good for you, it’s a great way to speak your mind, contribute to the greater good, and possibly make a living with someday.

After years of running over 50 blogs we have realized we could of done things a little easier and better from the start if we knew then what we know now. So in the fairness of the greater good (the true hacker code) we decided to create a step by step tutorial on how get a wordpress blog started off with style and smarts.

(This is done with a account from DWHS Website Hosting using their auto installer software.)

We also assume that you have nothing other then a credit card and some time, if you do have a hosting account already just skip to step 3.

1. Get domain registration, we recommend www.ezdomainname.com for Domain Registration
2. Get web hosting, we recommend www.dwhs.net (domain web hosting service) for Web Hosting the $3 a month micro plan will survive for now. You can always upgrade later for no extra fee with DWHS.
3. Go into your CPanel and click the Happy Face icon (Fantastico) then in there click WordPress to install the latest version.
4. Once installed, log into the admin section click: Appearance > themes then notice the default themes are boring lol. So next we need to get a good theme from the popular section of WordPress’s theme section: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/browse/popular/
5. After you find one FTP the new theme into the theme section of your blog called: blog folder > wp-content > themes
6. Then go back to the admin section and again click: Appearance > themes and activate the new theme.
7. Now that you have a nice looking blog you need to tell the world about your posts by pinging out. To do this add this list of pinging sites to the form section called: Settings > Writing > Update Services here is the current list of live ping sites (check marketing spot) for updates :
   

   http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
   http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
   http://bblog.com/ping.php
   http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
   http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
   http://ping.feedburner.com
   http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
   http://api.feedster.com/ping
   http://api.moreover.com/ping
   http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
   http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
   http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
   http://bitacoras.net/ping
   http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
   http://blogbot.dk/io/xml-rpc.php
   http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
   http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
   http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
   http://coreblog.org/ping
   http://ping.bitacoras.com
   http://ping.blo.gs
   http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc
   http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc
   http://ping.myblog.jp
   http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
   http://ping.weblogs.se
   http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
   http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
   http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
   http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
   http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
   http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
   http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
   http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc
   http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
   http://www.mod-pubsub.org/knapps/blogchatter/ping.php
   http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
   http://www.weblogues.com/RPC
   http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

8. Next, you will need some original content. A general rule of thumb is to have one picture on top of each post and to keep this image the medium size as fitted by wordpress. It’s better to let word press size the pictures so they all blend well and look professional.
9. Now that you have a good looking wordpress blog, original content, and have told the world about your new blog you probably want to make it better. A couple great ways to improve your blog is to add a contact form in the plug in section. Just search simple contact form and you will find a good one, you will need to create a contact page and add the code there for the simple contact form to work. Also Akismet is a must to filter spam, but like all spam filters be weary it will filter some real comments. Google site maps is a good plugin to help your SEO with Google. Next do a search in the wordpress plugin search for I love social bookmarking this will allow your readers to bookmark you for later reading of they choose. With DWHS web hosting you have stats in your cpanel that work great, so we do not recommend adding them in wordpress unless your host does not have them already. Too much junk in your wordpress can slow it down or cause extra server load.
10. Now that you have a advanced blog the final touches are needed to make it really stand out. To do this you will need some web design experience or outsource to someone like www.pagealive.com for web design services. With the right tools you can edit your header and side bar with nice graphics that fit your style more. This is done by changing the files through ftp in the themes section of your blog folder.