If you’re here, it must mean that you’re about to embark on the journey of starting a new blog. Let us guide you through this new adventure! Run through these five steps to make sure you love how your blog looks so you can feel proud to share it with others.
In this guide
Video Transcript
WordPress.com makes it really easy to create your own blog, so you can start sharing your ideas and building an audience. And these five steps will give you a solid foundation, so you can be proud to share your blog with others.
The first step is to create an account on WordPress.com, and then choose an identity for your site. To get started, visit WordPress.com and click the button that says Start Your Website. Next, enter your email address, choose a username which you can change later, and a secure password. When you’re finished, click the button at the bottom to create your account.
Now, you’ll be asked to choose a domain, or name and web address for your blog, as well as a hosting plan. You can always do those parts later. For now, just select the free WordPress.com subdomain, and you can start with the Free Site option.
When WordPress.com has finished building your site, you’ll be prompted to either start writing your first blog post or begin building your site. Let’s start writing.
Next, choose a name for your blog and then add a tagline to explain what your site is about. With your site identity in place, click Continue, and it’s time to start writing your first blog post.
Click the button to open the editor and start writing. First, add a title, and then simply start typing to add some text. In your first post, it’s a good idea to tell people who you are, what your blog will be about, and invite them to join you on this new journey. But you’re not limited to just text.
Select the plus icon to add an image, a heading, a photo gallery, bulleted or numbered lists, or a quote. And you can browse a list of blocks that enable you to easily add media like images and photo galleries, audio and video, or design blocks like buttons and columns.
And there are widgets to add custom HTML and much, much more.
When you’ve finished writing your post, click the Publish button in the top right-hand corner, and your new post will be visible on your site.
Now that you’ve published your first post, it’s time to think about how you want your blog post to look on your website. WordPress uses themes to determine the visual design of your site, including the layout, colors, and typography.
From the preview, click the My Site link in the top left-hand corner to access the dashboard, which is where you’ll find all the site management features you’ll need to create content and edit your site.
Under the Appearance menu, select Themes to browse all of the themes that are available for use on your site. When you find one you like, click to view more details about the theme. You can activate it with a single click or preview what your actual content will look like when the new theme is activated.
In the Customizer, you can further edit your site’s appearance.
Under Site Identity, you can add a logo, edit the site title, and the tagline.
Or you can edit the navigation menu, which we’ll cover in the next step.
You can choose what content is displayed on the homepage of your site.
And you can choose a different color scheme or create your own.
Of course, you can also choose which font you want to use for the body text and headings throughout your site.
And if you’re comfortable editing CSS, you can further customize the design of your site to make it look however you want.
First of all, you can preview those changes in real-time, and when you’re happy, click the button at the top to activate the new theme and save your customizations.
Alright, you’ve created some content for your site and customized the design. Now let’s create a navigation menu so your visitors can find their way around your site.
In the customizer, select menus and then select the primary menu at the top. Right now, this menu just contains a link to our homepage. But you can add pages to your menu and even create new pages from here, which you can then edit later.
I’ll create a new About page and a Contact page. And later, I can edit those pages to add some content. In addition to pages, you can also add specific blog posts or categories, tags, or even links to other websites.
With your navigation menu in place, your readers will be able to find the content they’re looking for on your site. Now your blog is ready for the world, so how do you get people to read it?
First, add a subscription form to any page or post, which will allow your readers to sign up and get notifications anytime you publish a new post on your site. Then, invite your friends and family to subscribe so they’ll be notified of your new posts.
When you’ve completed these five steps, you’ll have a solid platform for sharing your ideas and building an audience.
For more help, please visit WordPress.com/support.
Visit WordPress.com and click on Get Started to create your new account in a few quick steps. Choose a name for your blog that tells visitors what your blog is about. Once you decide on the perfect name, make it your Site Title by going to Settings. You can add a catchy Tagline too!
By signing up, you already have a site address like myawesomeblog.wordpress.com. Go further with your very own domain like myawesomeblog.com. Your domain is free for the first year with an annual or multi-year WordPress.com plan. Register any available domain at Upgrades → Domains:
Now it’s time to flex those writing muscles! From your dashboard, click on Posts and click Add New Post to start drafting your first introduction to the world. In your post, tell people who you are and what your blog will be about, and ask them to join you on this new journey.
Now that you have published your first post, it’s time to think about how to present your writing on your blog. Choose one of these gorgeous designs and then change, add, or remove any elements to make the design your own.
Your chosen design will display your posts on the homepage or a separate blog page. You can also use specific pages for different categories of posts, such as a Desserts page that only shows posts categorized as Desserts. Learn more about working with categories.
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You can explore other ways to display posts as well, such as in a carousel, using the Latest Posts block, or displaying Related Posts.
The menu at the top of a website contains the links readers can click to find their way around your blog. You can add your pages (like Home, About, and Contact), categories, specific posts, and links to other websites. Get started by going to Appearance → Editor and editing the Navigation block.
Now that your blog is ready for the world, how do you get people to read it? First, add a prominent follow button using the Subscribe block to any page, post, sidebar, and/or footer:
Then, invite friends and family to click that follow button to be notified of your new posts. You can also connect your social networks to automatically share new posts to Facebook, Tumblr, and more for extra exposure.
Happy blogging!
Gain all the fundamental (and a few advanced) skills you need to create a blog you’re proud of. Define your audience. Then build, publish, and grow your blog with an on-demand, go-at-your-own-pace course taught by the best bloggers on the internet.
