How to Start a Blog in 10 Mins - Simple & Easy (Step-by-Step)

Hey guys , my name is Alex Nerney with create and Go .

And I'm gonna be teaching you in this video how to start a brand new blog in just 10 minutes .

It's gonna look something like this and have a beautiful , easy to use dragon drop editor .

So there's no coding or crazy technical wizard skills needed .

All right , let's get into the content step .

Number one , you need a domain and hosting to blog .

The domain is the name of your website also called A URL .

So the domain for youtube is youtube dot com .

Think of hosting like the physical store for your new website .

We're essentially buying a space on the internet for our business so that people can visit you .

This combination of getting your own domain and hosting is how you start .

OK .

So the next step is to click the link in the description of this video .

After you click the link , you'll see this goofy image of our team come up .

Now , you should know that we do get a small affiliate commission from anybody that signs up , but we're going to save you money by getting you the lowest price possible .

So it's really a win , win .

You get the lowest price possible and we get a commission for you guys signing up .

Uh So it's great for everybody .

Ok ?

Now click the green button and go to the next page , scroll down and you're going to select the basic plan .

Ok ?

Now we're gonna select our domain name .

Let's try Alex Wanders dot com because this is gonna be a travel blog .

Ok ?

So the domain Alex Wanders is not available for registration .

Don't get discouraged .

If this happens , it happens a lot .

Uh just try a different domain .

So let's do Alex will wander and I know from checking that this will be available .

Great .

Alex will wander is available and ready for use .

Ok ?

Now scroll down to account information and let's fill this out .

Ok ?

Now scroll down to package information .

Now you'll notice that the package information that if you sign up and commit to more months that you , that your cost per month on getting hosting is less .

Uh but for a beginner and since you're just starting out many of you , I know that this will be your first blog .

We'll start with the basic 12 month price .

Now , scroll down , you'll see a bunch of package extras .

Now , many of these are not important .

You don't need site lock security and you do not need code guard basic .

Uh You'll see that knocked off our price uh but you do need domain privacy protection if you don't have that , your domain will be open and available for spammers and all sorts of people to send you crazy stuff .

Uh You'll get all sorts of phone calls .

Not good .

You need a domain privacy protection for sure .

Ok .

Now scroll down to payment information , enter your credit card information .

I'll make sure to blur that out .

Click the I have read and agree to blue host terms of service and cancellation policy .

Consider giving it a look over if you would like and then hit submit .

Congratulations .

You've got your domain and your hosting .

Now , let's set up our password .

You want this to be a complicated password but something that you will remember , click the I have read the blue host privacy policy and hit next .

All right .

Congratulations .

You can now log into your blue host account .

Click the blue log in button .

OK .

Step number two .

It's time to set up wordpress .

We use wordpress because wordpress is by far the best platform for bloggers now , platforms like Squarespace and Wix .

These are great places if you are having a stagnant website , meaning you're not updating the content at all .

But if your plan is to write blog posts or update your content and you want tons and tons of visitors .

Wordpress is the only place you should be starting .

Great news .

Blue hosts , partners with wordpress and you can see that the installation process is already a part of their setup Now , blue hosts is asking for you to pick a theme that inspires you .

Um We , these are some great themes .

Don't get me wrong , but we have a different theme that we're going to use in this tutorial .

So for now , we're just gonna click , skip this step .

All right , your website is propagating .

So this may take a few minutes to load , but just hold tight .

All right .

All done .

Our wordpress website is set up and ready to go .

Now .

Click the blue start building button .

All right guys .

Congratulations .

You've got wordpress now installed .

Step number three , let's start building our website .

So , what we're looking at here right now is your wordpress dashboard .

Now , your wordpress dashboard is the place where you will be editing your website .

It's the back end of the website you've created .

You'll see this crazy domain name up here .

Don't worry about that .

This is just a temporary domain name that blue hosts has set up for us .

This isn't our final domain name .

The actual domain name that we registered will show up .

It will just show up in about a day while it's propagating .

So not to worry , this is just set up by blue hosts as a temporary deal .

So we can go ahead and edit our website before the website propagates time to move on to step number four , we're going to install our theme .

What you want to do is you want to come over here and hover over appearance and then click themes .

Now there's themes back here that wordpress already gives us , but we're going to add a new theme .

Now , the great thing about wordpress is there are hundreds , if not hundreds of thousands of themes to choose from .

Maybe hundreds of thousands , maybe tens of thousands of themes to choose from .

But the one we're looking for is called flash blog .

This is the free theme that I showed you at the beginning of this tutorial .

You wanna come down here and click the blue install button and then click , activate .

Ok , fantastic .

Now your theme is installed .

Let's go take a look at that .

What you can do if you want to check out your website is hover over the welcome button here , right ?

Click on visit site and then click open in a new tab .

And now this is what our website ends up looking like .

All right .

So that's our , the bare bones of our website .

Let's start uh building it out .

Step number five , install plugins .

Now you come down hover over plugins and hit add new search plugins and we're gonna search for Element or we're looking for element or page builder , click install now and click activate .

Now we just installed elementary and elementary is great because it's a wonderful drag and drop editor .

So when it comes to editing our posts and our pages , it's going to make things stupid .

Simple .

All right .

Step number six , build your home page .

OK .

So to start building our home page , we're going to come into appearance and then customize .

So the first thing we wanna do is we wanna change this title tag .

Uh If you ever want to change something and it has these blue icons here .

This is an easy , fast way to edit this element .

So click , edit that element and open up the site title .

So I'm gonna put Alex will wander and then six months of travel two times per year .

And now let's hit publish .

Now , if we come over here and we see our website in our separate tab and we hit the refresh button .

We will see that this title will have changed .

OK ?

So we are editing our live website right now , which is pretty cool .

All right guys , what I want to go through right now is add a simple sidebar uh to kinda beef up this opening page a little bit .

We're just gonna add a little bit of text in our first image .

What we're going to do is we're gonna go to widgets sidebar and this is our sidebar in our widgets .

Now , these widgets right here , you see search recent posts , recent comments , archives , you will see over here as well .

You have the search bar , recent posts , recent comments , archives .

Now I want to get rid of a few of these .

So I'm just gonna come over here , recent comments and remove archives , remove categories , remove and the meta analysis remove .

OK , great .

So now we just have the search bar and the recent posts .

Now I want to add some things to my sidebar .

So I'm gonna click add widget .

The first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add a photo .

So I'm gonna click image .

So now we have , we have this little dropdown right here for an image .

Let's click , add image .

I'm gonna select a file and I'm gonna select from the files that I have on my computer .

Let's go find a photo of Alex , select the photo and it'll upload into my media library .

Now , your media library is the place where all of your photos are going to get stored .

But we'll , we'll talk a little bit more about that .

A little later .

I'm gonna click add to widget .

Let's give it a title .

They Call me Dirty , which is what all my friends call me .

All right , cool .

All right .

That's been added in there .

Now , let's hit Publish .

We'll be able to come over here , refresh the page and we'll see an image .

Hey , look there .

I am .

I made it on my website .

Now .

I don't like the position of that .

I , I want the image to be up here .

So all we have to do is come back here to our customizer , drag the image to the top hit publish and you'll see that will have changed and there I am top of my page .

Pretty cool .

Huh ?

OK .

Now say I want to add some text to this page , click , add widget , scroll down text and now I can add some text to this .

All right .

So I've already grabbed some text for that .

Just put that in there right now .

And then I kind of want this to come up underneath my image .

It's sort of like my bio .

So I'm gonna hit publish again , come back over here and click refresh and there is that text .

All right guys .

So that's it for now .

So in this tutorial , you've started your blog , got your domain and hosting and the next video that I'm going to create , that's gonna be in a link in either de the description or in the comment section below is going to be a more in depth tutorial on how to edit this and edit your pages , how to edit your header , how to edit your footer and just a few more technical design aspects and getting you started using element or if you haven't started yet and just wanted to watch the video to the end .

Go ahead and click this link right now .

And all right guys , I will see you in the next video .