Setup your own website for free with Wordpress!

Ever wanted to create one of your own blogs and record down your inspirations from life? With this guide, setting up a blog is made easy.

Usually, there are two ways for you to set a blog:

• Use a blog hosting service such as Blogger, Wordpress.com, AxieBlogs, etc.
  • Advantages: Very very very easy setup
  • Disadvantages: Less competant to customize
• Find a hosting space and instally our own blog script
  • Advantages: Full customization ability, even design your own theme, addons, etc.
  • Disadvantages: A bit complicated to set up (not anymore with this guide)

We at techcube supports the second way, just because.. well, it’d be much cooler for your friends to see and think “wow, this guy runs a blog at a non-blog hosting service!”, and it d make you feel good. But, if you want to continue with the first way, you might want to visit these links:

• Blogger: http://www.blogger.com
• Wordpress.com: http://www.wordpress.com
• AxieBlogs: http://www.axieblogs.com

Well now, let’s continue on about setting up a blog at your own hosting space. These are the steps to set up a blog:

• Find hosting space
• Download the script, and prepare for installation
• Install
• Customization + Done!

You will need a FTP software for this. May I sugest Filezilla: http://filezilla-project.org/

Now, let’s do it step by ste, and yes, all these steps can be done without any charge (legally as well)

Find Hosting Space

Sometimes, free stuff can be good too, just like these free hosting space. Sometimes different hosting providers might let you host for free for a certain amount of posts on their forum, display their ads on your website, or a certain amount of referrals. I found this really good directory here: http://www.free-webhosts.com/. Please note that you will need a host that provide MySQL and PHP support for you in order to install your blog script.

“Do you have a recommendation for us?” Oh yes, Novahost is the best host I have ever been at. They offer cPanel, 800MB and 10GB bandwidth per month for nothing except for one post in their forums (your sign up post). Their support is usually 24×7 and there are friendly users to answer your questions as well. (These are all from personal experience)

Now that you have found a free hosting space, go to your admin panel that your admin has provided you and open your ftp client and log in to it as well, then we will continue on setting up.

Download Script + Preparation

We are going to use cPanel here for demonstration how to prepare. Other admin panels should be about the same.

We are going to download a script called “Wordpress”, and it is a general accepted fact that it is the best blogging system ever existed. So now, we are going to go to its download page at http://wordpress.org/download/. (Note that it is NOT Wordpress.com)

Click on the big red link at the right, and you start downloading =)

I suggest you to open this file instead of saving it, as you are not going to use the archive anyway =). After then, extract to a place easily accessible, then go to your FTP client.

In your FTP Client, access to your /public_html folder in the “remote panel” or something similar (it is usually the case, but sometimes it might not be the root folder). If you want your users to access to your blog via a directory (such as yourdomain.com/blogs), then create a folder and access to that folder; if not, then leave it as it is.

Access to the folder where you extracted the wordpress archive in your “local panel”, and pull all the files over to the remote panel. This will upload the files from your local drive to the hosting space.

After you upload, we will need to create a wp-config.php. In your file browser, create a file called wp-config.php, and upload it to the root folder. Right click the file you just uploaded, choose FIle Attributes, and enter 777:

After then, we will need to setup a MySQL Database for your blog to use. (We are going to use cPanel as an example here)

Go to your cPanel, and look for an icon that says MySQL Databases

Click on that, and we will see the create a MySQL database screen. Enter name for your blog’s database to use (eg. blogs), and click “Create Database”

Then, click “Go Back”. Notice that when you successfully set up the database, it will be named to *username_db*, where username is your cPanel username and db is your database name. Scroll down till you see the “MySQL Users” section.

Type a username (just a name, doesn’t have to be the same as the cPanel username), then type a password (or generate one), and then click “Craete User”. Then, click “Go back” to go back to the previous screen.

Choose the user you just created, and select the blog database you just created. Click “Add”.

Click “All Priveleges” on the top of the table, then click “Add”

There! Remeber the your MySQL database name, MySQL username and the password for it, and let’s continue onto the next step!

Installation

Wordpress is one of the easiest script to install. The first step: Go to your blog website (wherever you uploaded it.. let’s say you uploaded it at /blog, go to http://yourdomain.com/blog)

A screen like something above would show up, click on “Let’s go” and continue. You will then see a config screen that lets you enter database name and user. Enter the the info you got from the last part, but don’t touch the host and table prefix – it is only going to confuse you =)

Click “Submit” after you are done. You will then see a confirmation screen. Confirm your inputs, and then you are done! Use the login details Wordpress gave you and go into your blog!

Customization + Done!

You are done with your Wordpress installation! Now, we are going to show you how to install themes and plugins onto your Wordpress installation.

Themes

There are some great themes located at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/. They would be awesome when you decide to mess up with the design a bit. If you want to create your own theme, design one yourself and follow this guide: http://techcube.net/2008/10/porting-your-website-design-into-a-wordpress-theme/

Browse for a theme in the theme directory that you like, and download it by clicking on the button at right

Extract it to a convinient place, and then open FileZilla. Access to the folder you just extracted in the local panel, and go to your blog site in the remote panel. Then, navigate to /wp-content/themes

In your local panel, go up one directory so that you can see the folder that the theme files are in, then pull that folder to remote panel.

After that is done, in your Wordpress Admin Panel, go to the “Design” tab, and click on the theme you want to install, and click “Activate” in the top left corner.

Go to your website by clicking on “Visit Site”, and you are done!

Plugins

There are tonnes of plugins available at the Wordpress website as well: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

The installation is similar to themes installation. Pull the plugins folder onto /wp-content/plugins, then activate them under the “Plugins” tab, and it is done!

The plugins configuration may be in the different tabs, so sometimes you might need to find for it for a while =P

Alright! Start Posting now!

Now all of these hardwork is finished, now you can start adding posts/pages to your website! Go to the “Write” tab and start writing =)

Remember: Your article is not going to show up in the website until you press the “Publish” button! Good luck =)

Stay tuned at TechCube for more Wordpress related articles! If you have any questions at all, feel free to ask us =)