Today blogging profession is the most popular among other. In addition to a profession it has also take the place of a personal business (sole proprietorship). In these days, most of the people are searching internet about what is a blog, how to start blogging, how to earn money with a blog, how to share my ideas with the rest of the world.
In fact learning a blog is fun and easy, and it doesn’t even have to cost a cent. In this article I will try to teach, explain and to show you how to start a blog for free. One of the great things about blogging is that anyone can do it and the barrier to entry is nil. For blogging you will don’t need to pay even a penny. For creating a blog you will have access to a computer with an internet connection. I don’t know many people without a computer that don’t have an internet connection. Most of the peoples worries about blogging, and consider it a difficult profession, but in fact blogging is as easy as playing with Lego.
I am going to share my own story with my visitors. In fact I have always been the creative type. In the early days when I was younger I used to love playing with my Lego, I was totally awesome at it and could build models on the back of the boxes without any instructions. I even built a whole Lego land from scratch it was huge. It is because the simplicity of the game. Every one can play and do it very easily, and they will don’t need any instructions about it.
Later when I grew up and got my own PC I discovered web design. Back when I first got on the net blogs and blogging never existed so I would build my web sites from scratch. Then blogging came along, it took off like a rocket and soon the net was soon littered with blogs. In these days blogs became a great alternative source of information besides magazines, newspapers and other media outlets.
What I have learned over the past few years is that building a blog is pretty easy. For creating a blog you don’t need to be a designer or know how to code. Although designing and coding provides help to you if you can design and code your blog, because building a blog is like building a Lego model.
How is building a blog like building a Lego model?
Building a blog is like building a Lego model because Lego models are made up of lots of little Lego parts that fit together to make a model. Same is the case with building a blog. A blog is like a Lego model except that the themes, posts, pictures, plugins and widgets etc… are the building blocks, for a blog. Although you still be thinking about to know how to put those building blocks together and combine elements to build a good blog. And you will also think that how building a blog is free.
With blogging, you can take a theme and build a blog but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be any good, you have to do more and you have to search materials about it on the search engines. I have seen plenty of good themes totally murdered by bad design choices, cheesy useless plugins, ugly colour schemes that make my eyes bleed. Therefore, you have to work hard, in the early days, about designing your blog.
When you first install WordPress you get a pretty plain default theme, themes are like a Lego base plate that you build things on top of. Plugins, widgets, and posts are the building blocks for your chosen theme.
It is important to note that just like a Lego, blog’s, plugins, themes & widgets come with instructions. Also note that these instructions won’t instruct you on building a great blog they will only tell you how to use the theme, plugin, widget or what ever it is. You will have to teach yourself how to build a good blog. There are plenty of blogging resources and websites there and a large amount of data is available on them about blogging. You will need to read and learn from them. Reading alone isn’t going to make you a good blogger; you will have to get your hands dirty.
Your first blog probably isn’t going to be the best and you will make mistakes but don’t let that stop you because you won’t learn without making mistakes or building bad blogs. Mistakes are good but only if you learn from them. Unless you learn from your mistakes then you are doomed to repeat your past mistakes like ground hog day until you learn from them.
I have built plenty of web sites and blogs, I have also made a lot of mistakes and bad design choices but I have learned from my mistakes and become a better designer. I still have a bunch of web sites, backups of old blogs and mock-ups of web sites that never got built sitting on my hard drive. If I were to look at some of them now I would cringe, one thing that I would see is that my designs and web sites got progressively better.
So you have decided that you want to create a blog, and your choice is WordPress great choice! Now you have two options. Do you drop some cash on a domain name (so you can have www.yourblogname.com) and a web host? If yes, then in this case, you can have full control over your blog. You can also go with WordPress.com which is absolutely free. But keep in mind that, in this case, you will get you stuck with a sub domain name which will be www.yourblogname.wordpress.com and very little control over your blog.
The choice is basically WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org, one costs money the other doesn’t, one offer full control over your blog the other offers next to no control.
Neither of those options sound appealing? No money? No problems. Don't worry there is a third option if you want full control over your blog but have no money to pay it for a domain and web hosting. You can find there many free hosting plans out there. For this purpose you will just need to go to Google, and type their “free web hosting” and you’ll find them. Although there are a few things to be aware of them.
In fact learning a blog is fun and easy, and it doesn’t even have to cost a cent. In this article I will try to teach, explain and to show you how to start a blog for free. One of the great things about blogging is that anyone can do it and the barrier to entry is nil. For blogging you will don’t need to pay even a penny. For creating a blog you will have access to a computer with an internet connection. I don’t know many people without a computer that don’t have an internet connection. Most of the peoples worries about blogging, and consider it a difficult profession, but in fact blogging is as easy as playing with Lego.
I am going to share my own story with my visitors. In fact I have always been the creative type. In the early days when I was younger I used to love playing with my Lego, I was totally awesome at it and could build models on the back of the boxes without any instructions. I even built a whole Lego land from scratch it was huge. It is because the simplicity of the game. Every one can play and do it very easily, and they will don’t need any instructions about it.
Later when I grew up and got my own PC I discovered web design. Back when I first got on the net blogs and blogging never existed so I would build my web sites from scratch. Then blogging came along, it took off like a rocket and soon the net was soon littered with blogs. In these days blogs became a great alternative source of information besides magazines, newspapers and other media outlets.
What I have learned over the past few years is that building a blog is pretty easy. For creating a blog you don’t need to be a designer or know how to code. Although designing and coding provides help to you if you can design and code your blog, because building a blog is like building a Lego model.
How is building a blog like building a Lego model?
Building a blog is like building a Lego model because Lego models are made up of lots of little Lego parts that fit together to make a model. Same is the case with building a blog. A blog is like a Lego model except that the themes, posts, pictures, plugins and widgets etc… are the building blocks, for a blog. Although you still be thinking about to know how to put those building blocks together and combine elements to build a good blog. And you will also think that how building a blog is free.
With blogging, you can take a theme and build a blog but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be any good, you have to do more and you have to search materials about it on the search engines. I have seen plenty of good themes totally murdered by bad design choices, cheesy useless plugins, ugly colour schemes that make my eyes bleed. Therefore, you have to work hard, in the early days, about designing your blog.
When you first install WordPress you get a pretty plain default theme, themes are like a Lego base plate that you build things on top of. Plugins, widgets, and posts are the building blocks for your chosen theme.
It is important to note that just like a Lego, blog’s, plugins, themes & widgets come with instructions. Also note that these instructions won’t instruct you on building a great blog they will only tell you how to use the theme, plugin, widget or what ever it is. You will have to teach yourself how to build a good blog. There are plenty of blogging resources and websites there and a large amount of data is available on them about blogging. You will need to read and learn from them. Reading alone isn’t going to make you a good blogger; you will have to get your hands dirty.
Your first blog probably isn’t going to be the best and you will make mistakes but don’t let that stop you because you won’t learn without making mistakes or building bad blogs. Mistakes are good but only if you learn from them. Unless you learn from your mistakes then you are doomed to repeat your past mistakes like ground hog day until you learn from them.
I have built plenty of web sites and blogs, I have also made a lot of mistakes and bad design choices but I have learned from my mistakes and become a better designer. I still have a bunch of web sites, backups of old blogs and mock-ups of web sites that never got built sitting on my hard drive. If I were to look at some of them now I would cringe, one thing that I would see is that my designs and web sites got progressively better.
So you have decided that you want to create a blog, and your choice is WordPress great choice! Now you have two options. Do you drop some cash on a domain name (so you can have www.yourblogname.com) and a web host? If yes, then in this case, you can have full control over your blog. You can also go with WordPress.com which is absolutely free. But keep in mind that, in this case, you will get you stuck with a sub domain name which will be www.yourblogname.wordpress.com and very little control over your blog.
The choice is basically WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org, one costs money the other doesn’t, one offer full control over your blog the other offers next to no control.
Neither of those options sound appealing? No money? No problems. Don't worry there is a third option if you want full control over your blog but have no money to pay it for a domain and web hosting. You can find there many free hosting plans out there. For this purpose you will just need to go to Google, and type their “free web hosting” and you’ll find them. Although there are a few things to be aware of them.
- The first thing that need to be kept in mind that the host needs to support PHP version 5.2.4 or greater and MySQL version 5.0 or greater. What you will get is generally listed under “Features”, “What you’ll get”, “Spesifications” just have a poke around any decent free web host will list what they offer
- If you choose to find your own free hosting, beware that some free web hosts will require that you let them put advertisements on your site, there are some free hosts that don’t require you to advertise so check carefully before signing up.
- There is one trade off, because you are using free hosting you will get stuck with whatever URL they choose to let you have, usually it’s just a sub domain like www.yourblogname.zymichost.com, or www.hottalks.wordpress.com or www.yourblogname.freeaspwebhosting.org. Although it’s an acceptable trade off for having full control over your blog.