How to start a (wine) blog
If you read WineEnabler.com and you don’t blog, you might be interested in starting a wine blog of your own. (Or, for that matter, you might want to start a blog about something else.)
A blog is much easier to setup than a traditional website, because it works with a standard Content Management System that you match up with a visual theme that you like. The theme controls the entire layout and look of your website.
So we decided to outline the steps in staring up a wine blog or any other type of blog. To help encourage new voices in wine blogging, if you start a wine blog because of this article, just let us know and we’ll give you a special place at the top of our blogroll to help you get started getting readers!
Know What You Want To Blog About
If you are reading this page on our blog, you probably are interested in starting a wine blog. But maybe you want to blog about something else. No matter. Following the steps on this page, you can start a blog about anything you want.
At the heart of blogging is writing. So the most important thing is to blog about something you truly enjoy talking, thinking, and writing about.
Lease Your Blog or Own Your Blog?
When starting a blog, the first real decision you need to make is whether to lease or own your blog. Let’s go through both of the options.
Leasing Your Blog
If you don’t want to pay anything for your blog, you can lease a blog at various blogging services, such as Wordpress, Typepad, or Blogger. Your domain, rather than being named BLOGNAME.com by you, will instead be one of these three options.
- BLOGNAME.wordpress.com
- BLOGNAME.typepad.com
- BLOGNAME.blogspot.com
Though these services are free, you won’t own your domain. And if you decide to move to your own domain that you own later, so you can have a BLOGNAME.com web site, you’ll have no guarantee that your readers will move with you.
If this is the direction you want to go, follow one of the links in the list above, and setup a free blog at one of those sites. We’re partial to Wordpress, because we use the version of Wordpress for owing your own domain. And that’s all you need to read on this page.
However, if you want to own your own domain and have complete control over and ownership of your site, read on…
Owing Your Domain – Purchasing and Hosting Your Domain
If you think you’ll be even half-serious about blogging, you’ll probably want to own your own domain name and site. (We own and host WineEnabler.com.) This way, you’ll have complete control over your site for its entire lifetime. Also, having your blog with the domain BLOGNAME.com will supply a certain uniqueness to your endeavor.
To own your own blog, you need to do three things: (1) Acquire a web host and domain, (2) Install blogging software, and (3) Start blogging!
Step (1) Acquire a web host and domain name
You’ll want to decide on a domain name for your blog that reflects a certain aspect of your site’s tone. We can’t really offer any advice here, because everyone’s different. Just think about it for a few days, because once you start building up your site’s online presence, you won’t want to have to start over if you change domain names.
By far, the easiest way to accomplish Step (1) is to purchase hosting and the domain name through the same hosting provider. This will automatically get everything up and running, and you wont need to point your domain name towards an outside host.
We use Bluehost.com for our web host, and we have been extremely satisfied with their service. You can purchase hosting for only $6.95 a month. If you sign up for a certain number of months, the domain is free. Otherwise, it runs for around $10 a year.
Step (2) Install blogging software
What we did for WineEnabler.com, and what we think is the easiest way to go, is to buy web hosting that installs blogging software for you with just a few clicks. This blogging software is also known as a Content Management System, or CMS, and for that we use Wordpress. We really like and recommend it, but a good host will offer installations of many good ones for free.
We use Bluehost.com to host WineEnabler.com, and they will install your blogging software for free, with just a few clicks.
If you want to install Wordpress on your own, you can go here for instructions. The installation process isn’t terribly difficult, but it would take too much space to appear in this article.
Step (3) Start blogging!
This step is pretty obvious! Just start writing and don’t stop.
If you started blogging about wine as a result of this article, just let us know. We’ll give you a special place at the top of our blogroll to help you get started with getting some readers.
Check out these related posts:
{ 0 comments… add one now }
Kick things off by filling out the form below ↓
Leave a Comment