How To Create A Hosted Blog Using Hostgator & Wordpress!

When I first started to think about blogging, around 3-4 years ago, I created many blogs using blogger, a free site that allows you to create a blog for free. It was great, I was able to upload posts, semi-customise my site and learn tips and tricks along the way.

Now most of the blogs I created never lasted more than a couple of months here and there because if I am honest I was not fully into blogging back then.

Back in September I considered starting a blog to help me with my depression, talk about products that I was using or new things I was discovering. That is when I started to research blogging a bit more and discovered getting a domain name and finding a company to host my blog.

For those of you who are maybes unsure of what hosting is, imagine your blog or website as a document, you have all the information but need somewhere to store it,you then find a hosting site that for a fee will store that document and make it available to view to everyone online.

The first and hardest part was naming my blog, I didn't want to use my name, so instead I started to think about me, my personality and my passions. I finally came up with Little Miss Plus Size, I checked to make sure that the domain name was free and it was.

I then watched a lot of YouTube videos and came across Hostgator, So I would like to share with you step by step how I created my blog and hopefully it might inspire you too!



1) So after visiting www.hostgator.com you are presented with something similar to the first image, you then want to click on the 'Get Started Now' button.

2)You are then presented with a new page titled 'Unlimited Web Hosting' and now you need to click 'choose a plan'

 3) Now Hostgator offer three plans, Hatchling, Baby and business. I went for the baby plan as I wanted the option host more than one site if I wanted to however if you just want to create one blog or website and have no interest of creating any more then the Hatchling plan would be great for you.

4) Now this is the time to register your domain, so once you have your blog name just enter it here to see if it is available, my blog is Little Miss Plus Size so I wanted my blog/website to read www.littlemissplussize.com.



5) Once you have registered your domain name you scroll down the page to find the information of your hosting plan, you then need to enter a username and create a pin number.

6) Now you need to enter your personal information, email, name etc and also your payment details, I chose to us PayPal as I feel safer doing that.

*If you are creating a brand new blog, it may be a good idea to create a new email account just for your blog, that way everything is in one place plus it separates your personal emails from your blogging emails, I made sure my email was just simply my blog name littlemissplussize@outlook.com.



7) Now that you have entered all your information it is now time to check and review your order to make sure everything is correct, if you are happy simply click that you have agreed to the T & C's and click submit. (Enter littlemissplussize in the coupon code to receive $9.94 off!)

8) Shortly after doing so you should receive a email containing all of your information from Hostgator. You now have access to your control panel, click the link from your email as seen here.



9) This is the login screen for your control panel, the easiest way to think of it is that your control panel is the mechanics of your blog, all your blog and website information will be stored here. Enter your username and password that was provided in the email that you received.

10) Once you have logged in you are presented with the screen above, your control panel.



 

11) Now scroll down the page until you see the 'Quick install' symbol.



12) you are now presented with a new screen, look down the left sidebar until you see 'Wordpress' click into this.



13) click continue, this will allow you to use wordpress to control your blog.



14) This step, you have to enter your email address, name and blog title, this will be the address that all your wordpress related emails will go to. Once completed click 'Install Now'.



 

15) You will now see a progress bar and once it has reached 100% it is complete. You are now given your Wordpress username, password and link to your admin area.



16) You should have now revived an email containing your information given in step 15,  Now you have to wait between 4-6 hours for your site to be activated, after that time you can then click onto the link to go to your Wordpress admin area.



17) Now that you have clicked your Wordpress admin link, you are presented with the Wordpress login screen, enter your username and password that was sent to you in the email from Wordpress.



18) This is now your Wordpress/blog dashboard, the back end of your blog. From here you can upload posts, customise your blog etc. Click the house symbol to take you to your blog.



19) You have now successfully created your hosted blog, its now yours to customise and upload your content.

This is a bit of a different post for me, please let me know your thoughts and wether or not you would like to see more of these types of posts.

Thanks for Reading

 

Tracy xx

*If you do chose to use Hostgator to host your blog, and use the coupon code littlemissplussize, I will be paid a small commission for referring you, However I chose Hostgator because thats what I used but you can check other hosting companies such as Go Daddy etc.