Whenever we tend to hear the term Website or a Blog, we somehow start visualizing the various lines of code that supports an online application. But nowadays due to the presence of Content Management System or CMSs, it has become quite easy for a non-technical person to create his own website or set up his own blog. There is Blogger as well a product of Google that allows you to create your own blog without any programming knowledge but it provides limited resources for one to manipulate when compared to CMSs like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. If you guys want to know more about the Content Management System you can refer to my article "WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal- A Healthy Comparison". Apart from CMSs and Blogger, there are some other websites as well that provides the support for creating websites, like wix.com where you simply have to drag and drop the components and you will be able to create your website in less than 15 minutes.
In this article of mine, I will tell you guys that what are the required steps for creating a Live Blog or Website and I will also tell, how to use WordPress locally in your system rather than using it after hosting. So let us start:
How to start a Blog using Blogger:
- Blogger is a free tool provided by Google, it provides an easy to use interface as an entry point for a person who wants to start writing Blog Professionally with zero investment.
- You can simply set up your blog by following three simple steps, first of all, you need to have a google account, either you can use your already existing Gmail account or you can create a new one, the next step is to select an appropriate name for blog and after naming your blog you have to select a template from number of templates available.
- Now the next thing that comes to mind, that for accessing the blog you will be in need of a domain name and a hosting space, don't worry my friend Google Blogger host your blog for free on blogspot.com and you can access your blog by typing yourblogname.blogspot.com as a URL on browsers. For instance, if you have a domain name then you can also use it but as of now, Blogger does not provide https support for custom domains.
- After setting up the Blog a dashboard will be made available to your from where you can add posts, new pages, can view stats about the visitors to your blog, and can also make changes to the appearance of your blog by editing the template.
- There is a link called Layout on the Dashboard that allows you to take care of the various components of the template such as the sidebar, the header or the footer and Blogger also allows you to add new components on your blog called as gadgets to enhance the functionality of your blog.
- You can also make money by your blog, by using Google Adsense, but for this, you have to first write somewhere around 20-25 blogs so that Google can find sufficient and unique content on your blog and approve your AdSense account.
- All an all Blogger is an excellent blogging tool for Beginners who find their passion in writing and sharing their views on the web.
How to start a Live Blog or a website using Wordpress:
- Wordpress is the most widely used Content Management System around the globe and it provides much more customization and a large number of plugins for the users to enhance their websites or Blogs much more.
- In order to start a Live Wordpress Blog, you need to own a domain and a hosting plan, there are a number of websites that provides you a domain along with the hosting plan at a very cheap rate godaddy.com is one of that website, HostGator is another, Blue Host is there as well.These companies provide different plans and one can select those plans according to their convenience.
- After getting the hosting and domain done, the next things to do is to install the WordPress on your Server that you have got from the hosting company, Installing WordPress is very easy you simply needs to provide the name of your blog and the other credentials like username and password also to access the WordPress Dashboard.
- After the Installation gets completed You will get a default WordPress theme for your blog which you can easily change as there are various themes available for WordPress.
- There are various kinds of plugins are also available on WordPress that are used to enhance the functionality of your website. I have already written an article on top plugins of WordPress you guys can check that out if needed.
- It has become very easy for a non-technical person to create a website using Wordpress cause of its easy and effective interface and with the availability of awesome plugins.
How to setup WordPress in your Local Machine:
- First of all, you have to download the WordPress Package from the WordPress official website wordpress.org.The latest release is WordPress 4.7.2.
- After the download gets completed simply unzip the downloaded folder and place it into the htdocs folder if you are using Xampp as the local server. If you are not having the XAMPP installed then you need to download it and install it.
- Now just open the folder and find out a file called wp-config-sample.php, it is the configuration file that is by default provided by the WordPress.Open this file in your favorite text editor as we need to make certain changes in this file, We have to provide database-related information in this file that what database we are going to use with our site, just give your database name and other required credentials and save this file as wp-config.php. If you haven't specified this information in the wp-config.php then while installing WordPress will ask you to provide the required information.
Configuring Database using the Config File
Configuring Using the Installation Wizard - Now simply start your server if you haven't started it yet, I guess you might have started it earlier for accessing PHPMyAdmin in order to create a database for your WordPress Site.
- After starting your server just open a browser and type localhost/your site name. If everything is fine you will see an Installation Screen, where you simply have to select the Language in which you want to install the WordPress and then press continue after this you will be asked to provide the site name and username, password and also the email address and then press install WordPress.
- This will Install the WordPress in your local system, if the installation is complete you will see a login window where you have to provide the username and password that you provided during installation.
- Now you can use your local WordPress site for the purpose of learning and now you can create a local Website first and later on when you become confident enough to go for a Live Blog or a Website you can do that as well. Just Login and see the use the Admin Dashboard.Just go through the various options of the dashboard and you will start feeling familiar with WordPress.
That's all in this article of mine, I hope you guys find it informative and now you have an idea of how you can setup either a website of yours or a blog by yourself only.
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