How to Start a WordPress Blog … written by a Newbie!

Ever since I decided to start Incredible Dad using the WordPress platform, it has been quite a voyage.  I’m actually afraid to calculate how many hours I’ve spent researching things, searching on the web, learning about plugins, widgets, SEO’s, tags, categories …. CODE…. I can’t belive I’ve started to CODE!!!

But I’m getting ahead of myself…. (deep breath…)

The purpose of these Posts is to take you along on my journey in the hopes that, maybe one day, it will save some poor sap.. I mean soul… from going on the convoluted path I’ve taken to get where I am today (which, for the record, isn’t very far yet).

So here we go!

The one place that I credit for helping me start this site is the Robb Sutton blog here:

http://robbsutton.com/category/how-to-start-a-blog/

At the time of this writing, he hasn’t finished the series yet but it’s been a blessing in terms of helping me set up the initial technical side of WordPress and my hosting company.  Step by step tutorial ensured I got my site up and running.  There were a few hiccups but they were easily overcome.

I had already purchased my domain through GoDaddy (bonus) and actually decided to use HostGator.  I did copious amounts of research comparing different hosting companies and my research supported Robb’s assertion that HostGator was a great place to go.  (I also found the  best web coupon out there that saved me $25 off my order!  use ‘WEBSITEMAG‘.  You’re welcome…)

After getting everything setup, and since I wanted to get up and running right away, I started searching for Themes… (cue another 2-4 hours of searching online).  Unfortunately, you can’t really circumvent this part as you need to find the one that fits you.  The best site that helped me was here:

http://www.bestwpthemes.com/

The funny part is that after searching through that whole site, I found the one I liked in WordPress itself.  I went into “Appearance”, then “Add New Themes”, typed in ‘Canada’ under keyword and voila, the one I wanted popped up…. ok, it took a lot longer than that but you get the idea…

After choosing my theme, I then started inserting some plug-in’s.  There are SO many plug-in’s and SO many blogs suggesting what plug-in’s to use.  The ones I liked were:

http://www.shaunlow.com/top-10-wordpress-plugins/

http://www.makefive.com/categories/technology/computing/best-wordpress-plugins

There are so many more but I found these ones to be complete and easy to read with good backup.

Like any geek dad, I kept wanting to “Pimp My Blog” instead of actually writing anything of consequence so I moved on to tweaking the look of my site.

Enter “The Code”.

This tacked on another 5 hours of work so I could get my stupid categories to show as pages.  Very difficult (lots of experimentation as I was too lazy to do a tutorial on PHP coding) but VERY rewarding when your site finally looks the way you want it!  If you’re interested, I was able to do the above thing by following the instructions on the link below then tweaking the code to fit the Theme I’m currently using:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/289184

After this, I finally decided to start writing some posts and here we are.

The latest change I’ve made to the site relates to the Permalinks and how they look in the web address bar.  I got the info from here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

That’s it for now.  I’ll keep the info coming as I go along.

Best of luck to everyone reading, thanks to all who made the links I’ve referenced.

Let me know what you think and about your journey via the Comments below!  I’d love to hear from you!

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