Setting Up WordPress

You’re here for one or more reasons. Perhaps -

• The only thing you’ve ever done online was order from Ebay or send email.
• You’ve got something to say but don’t know how to get started with a blog.
• You own a blog, but it’s not WordPress, and you want to explore WordPress.
• You want to learn about picking themes and plugins and widgets.
• You’ve bought the Thesis Theme and you don’t know where to begin.
• You want to buy Thesis. (You’ve come to the right place)
• You need some help with your writing skills.
• You accidentally stumbled onto this site and decided to poke around

This site is all about the pups and the struggle to get net-trained. If you’re an old dog who’s been able to keep up with the pack, share your bones, don’t bury them, even if you might find some of what’s here yawn-worthy. Once you’re done learning how to set up WordPress, check out the Thesis Theme and its simple installation, which is featured on this site.

Let’s Begin

Ideally, you should do a couple of things before you get started. The first is to come up with a name for your dog house. You want to pick a name that says what your site is about. For example, if you’re a pup who wants to sell collars for other pups, then a good site name might be, “Collars for Pups.” A not-so-good name would be, “Spike’s Stupid Cat Tricks.” You want to come up with a name that’s easy to remember and that reflects what your blog is about. A domain name will cost you from $3 – $10 per year. You’ll have an opportunity to search the name to see if it’s available, or you can try different variations.

Find a host.

If you’re just experimenting until you get better at this, find a free host that has automatic installation of WordPress, but me-thinks that may be near impossible — the free part AND WordPress. You might have to come up with some kibble for hosting. Most established and paid hosts will have the automatic installation of WordPress available through the control panel, also known as c-panel. Most hosts can sell you a domain name too. I highly recommend that you get a paid host that has one click installation of WordPress. Installing it on your own can be rather intimidating for beginners.

You might find that with a paid host you’ll be allotted plenty of space in which to grow your site, better support when you have questions or need to troubleshoot, and lower incidences of down-time. However, don’t fall for the ‘unlimited everything’ language. Read the small print. Most features will be unlimited to a point. For the average pup, there will be plenty of turf for you to mark. A paid host might cost anywhere from $4 to $10 per month for shared hosting – meaning, there are others sites on that server. If you already have a site, check the control panel for the one-click installation.

Next

You’ve got your host, your domain, and your WordPress installation. Your host will email you the login information for your new site. Don’t do like I did when I first got WordPress. I expected the login to be sent lickety split, so when I checked my email and it wasn’t there, I kinda panicked. I actually got on the phone to tech support. Before I could get through all the prompts, the email was sent and the login page was up. So give it a few minutes. Go find your chew toy or that old shoe.

The email will include a link to your website domain name, the link to your administration pages, the login information, and other instructions provided by your host. Go to your site and take a look around. WordPress sets up a default theme populated with information about, what else? – WordPress. Click around, get a feel for the layout. Next, go to the web address for your login. It will probably look something like www.mywordpresssite.com/wp-login. Sign in with the user name and password your host sent you.

The Landscape

If you’ve never played around with a control panel inside of a program like WordPress, it may all look like hieroglyphics to you. Not to worry. It will all be explained here.

When you first get inside (known as the Admin area), you will see three columns of information. The left column lists all the various areas of the interface where you can go to make changes and do some configuration. There’s no coding for you to do here, so go ahead and breathe. The first thing you need to do is change your password to something that you can remember, but not easily figured out by anyone else. Click Users and go to “your profile.” We’ll come back to the to the beginning in a minute. Look over that page, then scroll down to the area for changing your password. It’s near the bottom. I’ll wait.

All done? Ok. You can either hit your back button or go to the top left hand corner and click “Dashboard.” Now we’re back where we started.

Click here- The Most Popular Blog Platfrom, – which is all about WordPress and what the innards mean and do.

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