Your first article is posted and displayed on your homepage. Everything seems great. Now I’ll show you how to change a theme (design) of your blog. First of all I’ll recommend some great sources where to find free nice looking themes, and then I’ll describe process of connecting to your FTP server the simplest way. Finally we’re going to show how to install your Wordpress theme.

Someone says design is half of your success. I don’t think it’s true, but I agree the appearance is important part and you shouldn’t neglect it. One of the huge advantages of Wordpress publishing system is fact, that you can find millions of free nice looking designs on the internet. If you want your sites to look even more original, you can choose to pay for professional looking theme or hire someone who does it for you.

Every time when I start a new site I try to keep my expenses as low as possible. So for every start-up I use free theme. If my project gets more traffic and I see I’m successful, I can hire someone to design special Wordpress theme for me of buy some pre-made solution.

If you don’t want to read the whole article, you can watch my video about choosing Wordpress Theme, connecting to FTP server, uploading and installing theme on your blog.

Where to find free nice looking themes?

Let me just briefly explain to you, why so many developers make Wordpress themes for free. The reason is that they insert their link to their sites usually into the footer to your blog. Search engines like one way links and developer’s site will appear higher in the search results. It’s a win-win situation.

On the most of sites with Wordpress themes you’ll be able to preview chosen theme. That will help you to decide what appearance would suit your blog the best. Let’s take a look on some sources of your future design:

• Wordpress.org- Official free themes directory where you can find almost 800 themes available for immediate download.
• FreeWordPressThemes.com- Site where I found many great themes for a lot of my sites.
• TemplateBrowser.com- Simple site that provides a lot of Wordpress themes. II used them couple times.
• SmashingMagazine.com- Good post about 100 Excellent Free Wordpress Themes.I used couple of them.
• SixRevisions.com- Article about 50 Beautiful Free Wordpress Themes. I used couple of them.
• WPThemesFree.com- Big database of design for Wordpress.
• And much more. For more results search for themes in your search engine.

I didn’t like any free theme. Where to find premium one?

There are a lot of sites offering amazing themes and charging some fees for downloading it. You can either google them of look on Woo Themes or ThemeSpinner. One theme that really kicked me and almost immediately persuade me to download was Thesis Wordpress Theme. I know a lot of people using it and I’m thinking of implementing this theme on my blog too. Other way is to pay a professional who will design it for you. Try to search on Elance.com.

We found nice theme we want to implement on our sites but we don’t know how. Now is the time to connect to your FTP server. There is lots of software to use. You can look closer on FileZilla, FireFTP or Fetch for Mac. Personally I have use Total Commander and Dreamweaver. You can choose to try one of those or follow my next tip how to log in your server without installing anything. We’ll need just My Computer (File Explorer) or Internet Explorer. Following solution works fine with DreamHost web hosting I use and described before in my review.

How to connect to FTP server?

1. Open My Computer (You need to have Windows operation system for this). It’s usually located on your desktop.
2. Type ftp://yourdomain.com/ (instead of yourdomain.com put the name of your domain) into address line and press enter.
3. You’ll be asked for username and password, fill it.
4. After a few seconds you should be logged in. Open folder called the same name as your domain (yourdomain.com).
5. Now you are on the server folder, where your publishing system Wordpress is installed. Go into “wp-content”, then click on “themes”.
6. Download theme into your computer from the site where you found it. Now it’s compressed so you have to extract it (if you don’t know how to do it, take a look here).
7. Drag the folder from your computer to My Computer window into the folder I described before.
8. After the copying process you should see your new theme folder on your server.

How to install theme in your administration panel?

1. After files are uploaded you can log in into Wordpress administration panel and click on “Appearance” link in the left menu sidebar.
2. Find your theme on “Manage Theme” page that appeared and click on it.
3. The system will show you a preview of your site. If you like it, click  „Activate NameOfChosenTheme“
4. After that you can check your homepage. You appearance should change.

Now you can download Wordpress theme, upload it on your server and install it in your administration center. You can have almost unlimited number of themes and change them every day. I recommend you to don’t change it so much. Your audience doesn’t want to see different design and structure of your blog every time.

In the next post we’ll talk about great plugins you need to install in order to make your blog works better and be successful.

Last time I showed you how to install WordPress the smart way. Today we’re going to write our first post. It will be only a test so you can remove this post later, no worry. Let’s jump into it.

Log in to the administration center on your blog (type: www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/). You’ll see there a lot of buttons and options what to do. For the first time will just try to write a simple post. Search for sidebar on the left side of the page and click on “Add New” link under “Posts” menu.

Fill your headline and your content in. You can format your text, bold it, make bullets, change color of the text and much more. You can assign some category to your first post (you probably have to create one). If you like to add some picture, use small icon of the picture on the right of “Upload/Insert“text. After the click you can search for an image from your computer and upload it to your server without using FTP. If you are satisfied with the result simply click on “Publish” button and you are done.

It was that simple. On your main page you can see your new post displayed.

Next time we’re going to show how to connect on your FTP server and upload new theme. Are you excited about new design for your own blog? Read my next article.

This tutorial will be different from most posts on the internet. I’ll show you how to set up your very own blog in a second using WordPress. The whole process is really simple and all you have to do is take some time and read this article. Installing your publishing system will officially start your blogging career. After this you’ll be able to start writing, getting traffic, communicating with your visitors and much more.

As I mentioned earlier in the post about web hosting your blog, we’ll use DreamHost hosting to set up our blog. In their administration panel every customer has One-Click Installs. their system can install WordPress (along with other open source software like Joomla- publishing system, ZenCart- online store solution, phpbb- great free forum and much more) with just one click. Let’s take a look how to do it:

1. Go to DreamHost Panel and log in.
2. Click on “Goodies” option in left sidebar menu and then choose “One-Click Installs“.
3. Here you can choose from 3 options. You want to choose “Install new website software- Advanced mode”. From the list of different software mark WordPress.
4. Bellow this you can see column “Install to: “. Here you choose the domain you want to use. Don’t fill anything after „/“ if you want to install WordPress in the root folder.
5. Next step is selecting the database. You want to choose “Create a new database now“.
6. On the right from  „New Database Name: “ put some name (i.e. blogdatabase)
7. On the right from “Use Existing Hostname: “ choose „Create a new hostname now…“. Then fill mysql into first text area and choose your domain.
8. In “First User:” you want to choose “Create a new user now…”. Fill username and password (i.e. blogger and bloggerpasw789).
9. That’s it! Now click “Install it for me now!” button and you are done.

After several seconds you should get Success Message that says WordPress will be installed for you in 10 minutes.

Now you can relax and enjoy the feeling something is working for you. After 10 minutes you should receive an email notification that says the system was installed correctly. If you didn’t get any email, just check your domain or go to Support->Support History and the message should be there.

There is a video of the whole process if you have trouble to figure out from my description:

On you domain you’ll see welcome WordPress page. All you have to do is fill “Blog Title” and your email. Then click “Install WordPress” button. In step 2 you have to copy automatically generated password for admin user. If you don’t, you should receive the same information into you email inbox. Now Log in button and fill username “admin” and password. You are in administration panel of the newest version of WordPress. On main page (http://www.yourdomain.com/) you can see a new blog with default appearance. For better understanding there are screenshots of what you have to do:

Welcome WordPres page:

Success page with login information:

Log in site:

Administration panel on your site:

Great job, now you have your very own blog and you can start blogging. You can mess around, discover all features and functions. In the next posts I’ll show you how to configure your blog the best way, how to write your first post, how to change appearance, how you can implement useful plugins, how to optimize WordPress for Search Engines and much more.

All right. We already chose a niche. We know what topic we are going to write about. We also know how to pick a great domain name and how to set up web hosting. In this part of series about blogging we will discuss a publishing system.

It’s really important to choose the right one, because your success depends on it. In competition of many publishing systems I recommend WordPress as the best solution for you. Many of my sites (including this blog) are powered by this platform and I’m 100% satisfied with this free solution.

You can also try another system. Some of them are great too; maybe you’ll like some other one.

• Joomla!
• Blogger (online solution)
• Blog Engine
• Serendipity
• Movable Type
• Dotclear
• Nucleus CMS
• Life Type
• Boast Machine
• Text Pattern
• b2evolution
• Eggblog
• Zomplog
• Subtext
• TriptychBlog
• Presstopia Blog

The main reason why I recommend WordPress is (beside the fact I love it) offered support and easy solution that can be installed in a few seconds (I’ll show this later). On official page you can see a lot of professional programmers cooperating together, tons of plug-ins and themes ready to download and much more. If you hear about WordPress for the fist time I recommend visiting WordPres.org and reading about this amazing project.

I don’t force you to use this publishing system, but it works well for me and I want you to be successful and offer you a great solution so you can feel comfortable in blogging. Later in my next posts you will discover the biggest advantages of WordPress. For example in next article I will show you how to install and prepare this publishing system just in a second using DreamHost hosting! You don’t have to deal with MySQL, copying files on FTP, removing and editing HTML code- just click the button.

Next step after choosing domain name is setting up web hosting. This article describes a process of how to get .com domain for free and how to create host account for your blog. After this article you’ll have your own domain on your hosting and you’ll be ready to start real blogging. I’ll recommend some services of other companies. I do this primarily because I’m using it and it’s the best way for me to host my blogs and sites.

What is a web host?

Web host (server in the other words) is like a computer provided by a hosting company. It stores your site and provide it to other people who are also connected through the internet.

Externally hosted blog

Basically you have two options to go with. One of them is externally hosted blog and the second one is self hosted blog. If you just want to get the feel of blogging you can think about 100% free services such as Blogger.com owned by Google.com. This service gives you everything you need for blogging. It gives you free domain name (subdomain- yourblogname.blogspot.com), hosting and blog software you can use to manage your posts. This solution is good to start, but it has several disadvantages. One of them is lack of professionalism. Your options are limited; you cannot customize your blog the way you want. You should know that you actually don’t own externally hosted blog and your provider can switch your blog off any time. So for being a real blogger you need something more.

Self hosted blog

Ideal way to start blogging is self hosted blog. All you have to do is to choose hosting provider and link your domain you got based on my previous post to your new host. I tried many web hosting but right now I’m using DreamHost.com for couple hundreds of my sites. This is unlimited hosting, so you can host as many domains as you want. You have unlimited space and on the top of it you can register 1 domain for free. Because I’m confident it’s the best web host for your blog, I’m offering you 10$ off the price of hosting! This special offer is only for BlogMentoring.com readers. You can use this unlimited hosting for other pages you have or you will create in the future.

Why did I choose DreamHost.com?

The reason is simplicity and sophisticate solution especially for bloggers. In upcoming post I’ll show you, how to install and start your blog in several seconds! If you order through this link, I’ll give you 10$ off for year hosting program, so you save money. Let’s have a look what you have to do to set up your hosting account properly.

How to set up hosting account in 9 steps?

1. Go on www.DreamHost.com and click on “Sign up Now” button. Select “Host Domain” option on sign up page.
2. This will move you to the next step. Now you can pre-pay your hosting monthly, yearly and even for longer. The longer period the cheaper it is per month. I strongly recommend 1 year payment. Things are changing fast and you don’t want to pay hosting 10 years from now even you are not using it.
3. You don’t need private server (don’t choose anything here).
4. You want to use Google Apps (about them later), nothing more.
5. In step 5 you can either register a new domain for free or if you already have a domain, just choose “I already own a domain, I just want to host it with you.“ option. Free domain registration is still later available.
6. In step 6 you have to fill some basic information about you.
7. In final step you can use our special Promo Code “BLOGMENTORING”. If you fill this in, you’ll get 10$ off the price, so it will actually save you money. Check DreamHost’s Terms of Service and push “Proceed to Payment” button.
8. On “Submit Payment” page you will see summary of your order. You can pay by PayPal, Google Checkout or credit card.
9. After successful payment you will receive an email from DreamHost with all information you need. There will be your password too. After that you can login with your email address and password.

Link your domain to your hosting

If you registered domain during sign-up process on DreamHost.com, everything should be ready to use. You don’t have to link or set-up anything.

If want to use domain name that is registered somewhere else, go to Domains -> Manage domains in Dreamhost Panel (administration center). You’ll see there “Add New Domain” button. Click on it, fill your domain name and enter security text in the box and finally click “Fully host this domain now!”. After some time a successful page should appear with instruction how to set nameservers. These servers enable to show content of your blog after you write blog’s domain name into some internet browser. They connects domain and web host. Go to website of your domain registrant and find administration center. Change nameservers there to NS1.DREAMHOST.COM, NS2.DREAMHOST.COM and NS3.DREAMHOST.COM. After 24-48 hours everything should be set-up.

This whole process can take about 5 minutes. Next time I’ll tell you how to install and setup your blog in several seconds with DreamHost.

Read my DreamHost review.