How to Set Up and Configure WordPress

Which Type of Blog is Best?

Not so long ago creating a presence on-line required that you either learn how to build a website from the ground up or that you paid someone a lot of money to do it for you.

Thankfully, that’s no longer the case.

The explosion of blogs and blogging platforms over the past few years means that anyone who can type can now set up a website.

There are several blogging platforms that enable you to sign up for an account, select a theme or template, write an article and publish it on the web – all within about 30 minutes, and without the need for any technical knowledge at all.

And the distinction between blogs and ‘traditional’ websites is quickly merging.

In fact, these days blogs are considered as websites. They just happen to be very easy to update and maintain.

The way they differ from ‘traditional’ sites is that, by default, they automatically arrange the articles you write in chronological order with the newest articles first.

Different Types of Blogs

As blogging has become more popular, so the range of things you can do with blogs has expanded.

This has spawned different blogging platforms offering different levels of flexibility and sophistication.

Broadly speaking, blog platforms fall into 2 categories:


Even with self hosted blogs, the installation of the software has, for many platforms, been turned into a 1-click process.

Hosted or Self-Hosted?

There are many who simply want a hassle-free way of publishing on-line. For them a hosted blog is the perfect solution.

But if you want more control over your content and what you can do with your blog, self-hosted is the way to go.

Benefits of a Self Hosted Blog

The control and flexibility that hosting your own blog gives you enables you to turn your website into a search engine powerhouse.

The most widely used self-hosted blogging platform today is WordPress. And this site is all about how to install it, set it up, configure it so as to maximize its search engine attractiveness, and promote it.

You can customize its features and its appearance almost without limit. You can use it as a normal blog or make it act like a ‘traditional’ website. You can add forums, you can make it into a Photo Gallery, you can use it as a corporate website, you can have multiple authors – you can pretty much do what you like.

And the software is absolutely free.

Welcome to the world of WordPress! And by the time you’ve read and implemented everything in this book you will be a WordPress PowerBlogger.