5 Easy Steps to Host Your Own WordPress Blog

Since you are reading this post, you must be considering hard whether to migrate your existing free blog at WordPress.com to self-hosted blog using the free WordPress software from WordPress.org. You’ve come to the right place 🙂

I faced the same dilemma few months ago. But I made the brave move to migrate. For your information, it is so much fun to run your own hosted blog. It is a million times better. You should stop your hesitation now, and follow my 5 easy steps shown here. I promised that you will have your own blog running in no time!

Step 1: Domain Name and Hosting

I am using AnHosting after some research and reading some other users’ reviews. They offer very reliable hosting service for a very competitive price. So far I am very satisfied with their service. I am in Malaysia so I prefer email support every time I encounter any technical difficulty. I am glad to inform you that they reply my email within 30 minutes most of the time with proper solutions.

So just click the banner above to visit their site.

Click “Get Started” and you will be taken to a page to search your domain name. They will register your domain name free if you sign up for the $6.95/month package.

Type the domain name you want for your blog.

Proceed and you will be offered the Awesome Stats for $1.95/month. I signed up for the service but I don’t recommend you to add this additional service. You can use other plugin which is useful and works more conveniently when integrated in your WordPress.

Click “No Thanks! Just hosting”, then proceed for the payment and checkout.

After they verify your payment, AnHosting and Midphase shall email you the details of login and password.

Step 2: Installing WordPress

Now you have signed up your hosting service, and obtained all the details about your hosting account. I am going to show you how easy it is to install WordPress at your server.

Go to http://yourdomain.com/cpanel

Login with your password and login name provided in the email from AnHosting.

Click “Fantastico”

Click “Wordpress”

Click “New Installation”

Fill in all the particulars. You will need the administrator-username and password to login later.

Click “Install WordPress” after you completed the form.

Hurrah!! WordPress is successfully installed on your server within a minute!

Step 3: Upload plugins and themes

Now you can login to your self-hosted WordPress at http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin with the administrator-username and password you set on the installation page. However, most bloggers use WordPress because of the unlimited plugins available and community supports that made it a great blogging tool! Your original WordPress is almost empty and clean. So I recommend that you install several useful plugins before you start to blog. To make your life easier, I had compiled the most commonly used plugins and search engine optimized theme for you.

Download this plugins compilation zip file plugins.zip

Download this theme zip file themes.zip

Just leave it in zip form and upload it to your server. Follow these steps on how to upload the zip file into the relevant directories:-

Go back to your Cpanel ( http://yourdomain.com/Cpanel )

Click “File Manager”. A new page pops up

.

Click “public_html” (click the folder icon, not the words)

Click “wp-content”

Click “Upload Files”

Browse the file you downloaded “themes.zip” and “plugins.zip”, then click “upload”

After the successful upload, click the zip file’s name. Start with “plugin.zip”.

Then look at the top right corner. Click “Extract File Contents”

The file contents will be unzipped into “plugins” folder automatically.

Do the same for “themes.zip”

Now you had successfully uploaded all the recommended plugins and themes!

Step 4: Blog setting

You will need to do a lot of setting before you put in any content.

Login to your self-hosted WordPress blog (http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin).

Activate all the plugins at “Plugins”. Click the plugins name to visit the plugins homepage for more information of the plugins setting.

Choose the theme you like at “Presentation” page. I recommend you use the Prosense theme developed by DoshDosh. It is an optimized themes which I am using now 🙂

Go to options page to apply all the setting you prefer.

Step 5: Fill up the Contents

Finally, you can start blogging! You can import the post from your WordPress.com blog, or other free blog like blogger.com, typepad etc.

If you need any support, please ask in the comment section and I will try my best to help you within my capability.

Enjoy blogging! Monetize your blog when you think it is appropriate.

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