You’ve decided to share your story and your expertise with the world. It’s time to start your lifestyle blog. You love recording memories and helping others, why not turn it into a blog (where you could potentially make some money from it). Starting a lifestyle blog is fun, exciting, and easier than you think.
Once you are sure you want to start a lifestyle blog, and you have chosen a name for your blog as well as a platform, it’s now time to set it up.
If you followed my recommendation and sign up with with Siteground for hosting and domain (yay!), then these are the next steps to set up your blog. I recommend Siteground because of their stellar customer service for newbie bloggers. If you have a good handle on technology, you can also try BlueHost. That’s who I started with. Seriously, you can’t beat a couple of dollars a month, and free domain registration for a year on Bluehost.
For this tutorial, I’m going walk you through hosting your blog with Siteground.
You’ve got your domain name chosen, right? And your credit card ready? Ok, let’s do this!
STEP 1: Visit http://www.siteground.com and chose a plan.
SiteGround has three plans and you can sign for any of them with a great discount through my link here.
- The StartUp plan is perfect for people with one website that are starting now (This is what I recommend, if you aren’t sure you want to keep blogging for a long time. You can always scale up later. Keep things simple and affordable now. With my link, you get a discount of 50% off from $9.95/month to $4.95/month)
- The GrowBig plan is a great value for money offer, including the option for multiple websites and the SuperCacher that greatly improves a WordPress and Joomla website speed’
- The GoGeek plan is perfect for people with e-commerce and larger sites, or more geeky development needs like staging and GIT integration
- All plans include FREE domain registration.
Step 2. Enter your Domain name (aka the name of your website)
- Again, you get free domain registration that is included in the SiteGround hosting service, if you buy through my discount link here. The domain is free of charge as long as you have active hosting with Siteground.
- It’s up to you, but I would also select the box that says “domain privacy”. This keep your info private for those who may be looking to buy your domain.
- Hit “pay now”
Step 3. Enter Your Information
- You’ve got your hosting plan and domain name, now it’s time to enter in your information.
- As a reminder, I definitely would select domain privacy as part of the extra to help protect from hackers.
Step 4. Set Up Wizard
- Your account is now created and, and Siteground has a set-up wizard which will get you set up with wordpress!
- Here’s the easy part. Just follow along the steps of the set up wizard
- On “website preferences”, definitely select WordPress
- On Software Installation,choose login details, pick a username and password that will deter hackers (keep this info in a safe place)
- Then choose a website design/theme (you can always change this later)
- That’s it! Access your site and you’re done. You access your site by typing in www.(yourwebsitename).com/wp-admin, then enter the username and password that you selected.
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Start blogging!
If you have any questions at all, Siteground has rave reviews about their customer support. That’s why I recommend them for new bloggers.
It doesn’t take much time or money to blog. Even for those non-techie people, it’s best to go with something that’s super affordable and super helpful like Siteground.
Think of your blog as your digital dwelling.
Your landlord is Siteground or Bluehost or some other company.
Think of it this way, your hosting company (siteground/bluehost/etc) is like your landlord. You pay them a small fee as rent for server space for your blog.
Your apartment building is wordpress.org
WordPress.org, which is included when you sign up with SiteGround, is like your apartment building. It is where you build your blog, write posts, decide on a theme and colors.
Your domain name is your address
Your domain name (or URL) is like your address . It tells people which apartment is yours. And your domain is FREE when you sign up using my link.
Your theme is your home decor
There are thousands of themes out there to dress up your blog. You should make it unique to you. Don’t worry about the bells and whistles now. Start with a theme and then as you learn more, you can tweak it later.
Did this tutorial help? Have you started your blog yet? What’s your lifestyle blog going to be called?
