How to Start a Blog with WordPress in 2022

Wondering how to Create a Blog in WordPress?

It is very easy to start a blog in WordPress but easier to get diverted due to wrong blog/ guidance.

But you are at the right place to start your dream website with 460 million more users of WordPress.

So coming to our purpose, you must be planning for starting a blog to share your idea with the world! Blogging is not rocket science. I will be trying to make it very simple and clean for you.

The only thing I need from you is, your few minutes of undivided attention. And we will end up with a well-optimized blog for you!

Well-optimize means a blog/ website with all the necessary tools along with a best-optimized hosting (server).

So, Shall we Start ?

Let’s break it into parts for a better understanding of the whole process. It will create a blueprint on your mind before we will go through in detail with all this reading and implementation.

1. Buy a Hosting for Your Blog to live.

Web hosting is where your blog will live 24*7. In simple words, all your content, designs, writings, and images will be stored in their server (Hosting). So, it will be up and running (online) all the time.

Now, you might be thinking, without a domain name how could you directly go for a Hosting. It’s because we are not going to buy a domain.

We will get that for free with the popular hosting providers.

When you are thinking about creating a blog you must have a name in your mind for your dream blog. That name is going to help you choose your domain name.

To reveal the mystery let’s go for the hosting.

There are many hosting providers are available on the internet. Starting from the free hosting providers to the paid hosting providers.

Now don’t get confused between free and paid ones. If you are planning for a serious blogging you must go for a paid one.

But if you just want to play around or want to use it for learning purposes, then you can give the free one a try. Here you need to buy a domain or get a free subdomain from WordPress.com, Weebly, Wix, and many more.

In free hosting, you will have very limited resources where you can not run a full fledge website or a blog. Also, there is a chance of losing control from your website at any time for a small mistake.

Free hosting is like, you are running a blog/ website on the provider’s domain & server. Let’s not just get deeper into this. I will make a separate Article on Free hosting.

As this article is all about creating a blog in WordPress, we will stick to that with a paid hosting & domain name.

This is where most of the people get diverted from the goal and end up with a lot of trouble due to wrong guidance.

There are hundreds of thousands of web hosts out there. But like a plant requires the matching environment to grow, WordPress works the best when you have a managed WordPress hosting environment.

I have tried several hosting providers and analyze the way it works with WordPress. Where I found 5 to 6 best WordPress optimized hosting providers are available in the market.

Below, I have quoted some of the best WordPress hosting providers. Just go for any one of them. The results will be almost the same. (Price/month)

• Bluehost: $3.95
• Hostinger: $0.99
• DreamHost: $2.59
• iPage: $1.99
• SiteGround: 6.99
• kinsta: $25.00

If you ask my recommendation, I must say just go for the one recommended by WordPress.org (Bluehost, DreamHost & SiteGround).

These 3 are the best WordPress Optimized hosting providers out of the thousands out there.

What else do you need apart from the one’s (WordPress) recommendation where you are going to run the blog for a lifetime.

We will go with the one (Bluehost) used by most of the WordPress users for demonstration purposes. You can choose any one recommended above that suits your budget and serve the need.

Bluehost is one of the trusted and oldest recommendations by WordPress, who is every blogger’s 1st preference due to its non-comparable features, service, and support.

On Bluehost you will get features like:

• Free SSL
• Free domain name (Saving of $12/year)
• Unlimited storage
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Easy to use cPanel
• Live chat support
• 30 days money-back guarantee

And the best part, it only cost $2.95/month

Here is how to buy it:

• Go to Bluehost.com
• Click on Get started now

Simply go for the basic plan without brain strumming. It is more than enough to start your blog unless you are planning to create multiple websites. It can easily handle up to 25,000 users per month.

Anytime you can upgrade the plan with your hosting provider without losing the fees you have already paid for your existing plan.

After choosing the plan you will land on a page where you can claim your free domain name. If you have not yet finalized the domain name, you can click on I’ll create my domain later.

On the next page fill you contact details to proceed for the payments.

Apart from Domain Privacy Protection, uncheck everything.

On the payment page, you can make the payment through Credit Card, Debit Card, PayPal & Other options.

After the successful payment, you will get all the required details into your email. So, once you have received the mail with your login credentials login to your hosting panel for Installing WordPress.

2. Install WordPress with a Single Click

Assuming that you have brought the hosting as per the recommendation, we will go forward and install the WordPress (A blessing for bloggers).

let’s start with the Bluehost hosting, but you can also check the WordPress installation steps for other hosting providers below.

Guide to Install WordPress with Hostinger, iPage, Dreamhost, Hostgator, Siteground & Kinsta.

To get Started with Bluehost:

1. Log in to your new Bluehost account.
2. Go to the My Site tab
3. Click on the Create Site button at the right site.

Next you need to enter Site Name & Site Tagline. Don’t stress out too much, you can change/ edit these anytime. Click on Next.

On the next page choose the Domain from the list. Uncheck recommended plugins for now and hit next.

Bluehost will install WordPress for your blog in a few seconds. On the next screen, you can have your login details to the admin panel.

You can either click on login to WordPress or log in directly from the browser by typing /wp-admin after your domain name. (ie: yoursite.com/wp-admin) and provide the same username & password received after the above installation process.

3. Understand The WordPress Admin Panel

This is the landing page after log in with your WordPress Admin:

First, you need to understand the use of available features on the admin panel, where you are going to play around.

1. Dashboard: This is the landing page after you log in to WordPress. Where you will have Quick Draft (don just think write it), At a Glance (Total count of posts and pages), WordPress Events & News (Global ongoing) Sections.
2. Post: Here you are going to Create post, category, and tags for your blog. Also, you can check all the posts you have written from starting under this section.
3. Media: All the images, videos, files you re going to upload into your blog will be available here.
4. Pages: How it is different from the post? Well, the answer is very straight forward, you can create the sub-pages like About, Contact, policies, digital store, etc. under this section.
5. Comments: All the discussion by your readers on the website will be available here. You can edit, delete, and moderate them here.
6. Appearance: Under this section, you have all the features to customize the website ( Themes, Widgets, Menu & Theme editor) for a better look as per your requirement.
7. Plugins: You can view installed plugins and add new plugins under this section. there are 50,000 + Free plugins and 7000+ paid plugins are available in WordPress. Also, you have an option to upload plugins created or brought outside WordPress.
8. Users: Here you can create and assign roles for your team members or staff.
9. Tools: This is a maintenance section for WordPress from where you can import and export your content and settings.
10. Settings: Here you can find all WordPress settings. We will discuss some of the important settings in the next step.
11. Profile: This is your profile section. From here you can do edit and logout from the admin panel.

4. Basic Settings for your WordPress Blog

Configure General Settings

Navigate to Settings > General: Set the final Site Title and Tagline for your blog.

Scroll down and set your local Timezone & Date format.

Navigate to Settings > Discussion: I don’t understand why this outdated option is still available on WordPress. This will create conflict in the future. So better we keep this option off.

Configure Permalink Settings

Navigate to Settings > Permalink: This is going to be the link structure for your blog posts. Make sure you are not going to change this in the future, once you have started publishing blogs. It requires technical guidance to change the permalink. Else you will end up damaging your website’s SEO.

5. Give your Blog a Look & Feel (Customisation)

Set up Logo and Favicon

Navigate to Appearance > Customize > Header > Site identity: Here you can change your website Logo and Icon (Skip this step if you are not yet ready with your Art-works). Favicon (Icon) is a small icon visible next to your site title on the browser tab and search results.

Clean up default data

Navigate Post > All Post: Delete all default posts.
Navigate Page > All Pages: Delete all default pages.
Click on Comments and delete dummy comments if any.
Navigate Appearance > Themes > Click on every theme one by one and delete everything except the active one(Twenty-Twenty).

Install a Theme

Thanks to the WordPress themes. It is going to give an expected look to your blog without any coding knowledge.

There are millions of theme free and paid all over the internet for every blog of WordPress as per there requirement. For now, I will suggest to install a free theme from word press. Anytime you can install a paid theme or upgrade the same free theme into paid one with added features.

Here are some top free theme recommendation: Hestia, Neve, Astra, Divi, Ocean WP, Zakra, GeneratePress

To find and install a free theme just navigate Appearance > Themes > Add New (at top left corner)

There are two options from where you can install a theme. Either you can search for the themes at the right-side Search box or also, you can upload an external downloaded theme by clicking on the left side Upload Theme button.

6. Let’s install Some Must-have Plugins

You have to install some Important WordPress plugins before start writing your first post.

Navigate Plugins > Add New: Check for the individual detailed installation guides if you find any difficulty installing these plugins.

1. Akismet: This plugin will protect your blog from spam comments. (Proper way to install and configure)
2. Yoast SEO: A Must-have plugin for all your SEO needs. (Proper way to install and configure)
3. W3 Total Cache: Optimize and speed up your website to load faster. (Proper way to install and configure)
4. WP Form: To create different form templates like Contact, subscription, promotion, etc. (Proper way to install and configure)
5. WP-Optimize: This does not require at the beginning stage but a must-have plugin with passing days. (Proper way to install and configure)

Tip: Don’t install a lot of plugins for everything. It will create a lot of queries and slow down your website. Not all plugins are bad or every plugins are good. So install only those plugin the one is must required and you are sure about it.

7. Publish Your First Post

Now, as you have completed almost all the basic setup It’s time to show the hidden you to the world.

Start working on the purpose you are here the reason you have started your blog. Don’t waste a lot of time on customizing or working on the looks of the website.

When you will have readers you will get Idea from them the way they want to see your website’s look.

Video Version of this Article:

Final Words:

I believe this post helped you Create your blog in WordPress. If you have not started yet and just wanted to understand the whole process then you can start now with claiming your Free Domain with Bluehost Hosting.

There are 2 billion websites on the internet and many do start blogging but everyone not end up with success. Because the don’t sure what they are doing or due to lack of experience.

Learn How to list your WordPress blog on google search from very 1st day!