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OK, so you’ve decided what you’re going to write about, picked a domain for your blog, selected a place for it to live and loaded up the software. What’s next?

Well, you could run with the default theme (ie appearance) but they’re usually pretty boring and it’s best to choose something that’s jazzier and fits in with your theme. If you’ve loads of money you can get someone to write a custom theme for you but realistically most of us use one of the many free themes around and perhaps modify it a little by adding a personal photo or whatever later.

If you’re using the Wordpress software then the easiest way to find free themes initially is to go to the Wordpress theme viewer. This gives you a whole range of search options including themes with from 1 to 4 columns, various colours, fixed/fluid width, whether it needs plugins, if it’s widget ready and if it’s got an options page plus a few others. Wow! Complicated, or what? Don’t worry though: most of them don’t matter much and I’ll explain the main ones here:

1. Number of columns. Four columns really require widescreens and one is too limiting, so it’s best to go with either two or three column layouts. Initially you’ll find that two is enough but as your blog grows you’ll need three at some point.
2. The colours? Take your pick.
3. Fixed/fluid width. If you use fixed width then on people using wide screens, your blog will only take up the middle of the screen. Fluid width themes fill the screen no matter how wide it is.
4. When you’re starting out, forget those themes requiring plugins as it’s a complication you don’t need.
5. Widget ready themes are handy to have though you’ll not use them initially.
6. Sometimes an options page is handy. I wouldn’t go out of my way to find a theme that has one though.

So, choose a theme that has 2 or 3 columns, in your favourite colour, with fluid width and ignore all the other search options.

This will bring up dozens or perhaps hundreds of themes. When you find one that you like, click “Test run” to get an idea of how it will look. Once you’ve found one or two that you’re happy with click “Download” to get it onto your computer.

The downloaded file is a zip file which means that it’s compressed. To get this onto your hosting site, you need to open the file that’s downloaded (Windows automatically converts the file to an uncompressed version for you) and copy the directory within that from your computer to the wp-content/themes directory on your hosting service for your blog (usually ftp://ftp.yourblog.com/wp-content/themes).

That’s the complicated bit done. All that you need to do now is to login to your blog, go to presentation and select the new theme. Once that’s done, check out how your blog looks with the theme you’ve chosen in case it’s not quite so good looking in reality as you thought.

If you don’t like that theme, just download another one and change it!

Popularity: 24% [?]

We’ve spoken about getting a domain registered but once you’ve done that you need to find somewhere to store all the text and photos that you’re going to produce in your blog. This is called a hosting service.

Your registrar will usually offer a hosting service but that’s not always the best one to use. For example, we recommended that you register your domain with GoDaddy but they’re based in America. If you are in America too and you expect your main readership to be in America as well, then you could use them but even then there are restrictions on their hosting accounts and removing those restrictions means an expensive upgrade.

In general terms, your main requirements for a hosting account are:

1. a host that is based in the country of your target audience ie if you are aiming at a UK audience, you should use a UK host;
2. a host that offers MySQL and PHP relatively cheaply (these are required for a blog);
3. one that offers preloading of blog software for you is useful but far from essential;
4. preferably one that offers add-on domains (you won’t need this initially but if you add another blog later you will);

Usually the add-on domain feature is what knocks out most services. If you don’t have this, then each time you add another blog you’ll need to pay for more hosting. For example, if you are paying £30/year for your hosting plus £5/year for your domain that’s £35/year. If you want to add another blog or website to that £5/year is enough if your host offers the add-on domain feature but £35/year if they don’t. That adds up quite quickly if you add a few domains over time.

So who should you use?

First off, ignore all the free hosting sites. They will generally exclude you from making paid posts (which we’ll be getting on to later) and also they place adverts on your site. If anyone is going to place commercials on your site, it should be YOU. Also, don’t make it a decider for you that the hosting service will pay for a domain registration: this just ties you in to them and you shouldn’t take up this option (after all, it’s only saving £5/year).

If you are in America or aiming at a North American market, BlueHost at $7/month is very good (and they’re not even paying us to say that!). They offer unlimited add-on domains and even one free domain registration (don’t use this as it ties you in to them).

For the UK market, we use EUKHost which at £30/year with unlimited add-on domains is hard to beat.

When you are choosing the hosting plan, take the lowest charging option that provides MySQL and PHP; realistically you won’t need any more for a long time, if ever.

So, off you go and sign up with a hosting service and next time we’ll tell you how to get the blog software loaded.

Popularity: 6% [?]