Your author or artist website is a place where I’d hate to see you skimp. I’ve been a professional web developer for over 15 years, so as you read this you should assume I have some skin in this game.

Good hosting does not have to be expensive. The company I use, Charlottezweb, costs $5 a month or about $50 a year, and Jason & co. far exceed my expectations as both a web expert and a right fussy chap.

I do not know if Google searches are less effective for finding a site on Weebly or Wix or those free services. What I do know is that over the years many services like that have come and gone, and if they go, so does your site.

If your paid hosting company goes away, your backup copy of the site can be quickly and easily moved to new hosting, with almost no down time.

Same is true if you just plain want a change: those sites using special DIY tools can’t be moved to other hosting. A real website (I recommend WordPress, installed on your own paid hosting) can be moved anywhere you want, any time you want.

Consider the other important professional services you use in life. Would you depend on a guy who would do it free, but tacked on his own advertising, made you use tools he liked, and could disappear any time because, after all, he’s doing it free? Or do you pay someone because you need them to be there next week and next month and next year?

While I do all this geek stuff for a living, I don’t charge a penny to answer questions about technology. I hate it when someone is hurt by bad choices they could have avoided with better information. If I can help you make good choices, I’m happy.

The topics covered include:

• Getting started with the basics of blogging including why you should have a blog and what the benefits are of having a blog
• Three keys to successful blogging
• When to post, finding time to write, ideas on what to write
• Promoting your blog via social networking sites
• My personal recommendation on which blogging platform to use and how to get started affordably

You can download this free report now at Sue’s other website. Please let us know if you have any questions.

1. Create the database. I do this directly through cPanel. You don’t need to use PHPMyAdmin (is that the worst name EVER?) for WordPress installs, only for cleaning up botched messes, which I recommend against. The database name is totally wholly completely irrelevant. Feel free to call it Martha, if you like.
2. Create a database user for WordPress. I call mine [it's a secret!]
3. Give the WP user full rights to the db
4. Upload the WordPress install files to the folder where they’ll live. For your first install, put it in public_html or whatever your hosting company calls the web root. For other installs, create a folder named for the domain name, not because it matters (again, you could call it Martha) but because it’s easier to remember that tunehenge.com lives in the folder “tunehenge.com” than to remember it’s in x42m13.
5. Modify wp-config.php by changing the database name, username, password, and table prefix. THE TABLE PREFIX MATTERS. Again, it can be anything, but why not make it memorable? For my website “Why We Lead” I used wwl_ and for “Someday Box” I used now_ because those are easy for me to remember. Yes, we’re using the same database for multiple WP installs. If you’re managing it, put it here. If you’re setting it up for someone else to manage WordPress, create a separate database so they can’t hose yours. But if you set up a site for someone else, and they’ll always have you managing it, make your life easier and just use one database. Think long-term, though. If they’re likely to take control in 2 years, set it up separate now.
6. Upload wp-config.php and go to the URL of your site.
7. If all is well, and you don’t get a “can’t connect to the database” message, but do get a “create a WordPress admin password” then fill in the blanks and click “H’ray” or “Go” or “OK” or whatever the button says.
8. Enjoy your site.

Other notes:

Always back up the database before you do a core update.

Install Spam Free WordPress because it’s a good free spam killer.

Install JetPack and connect it to a free WordPress.com account (you don’t have to use WP.com but having an account there gives you access to lots of cool features.) Use JetPack for comments, contact form, and whatever else it offers.

Lemme know where you get stuck. Glad to help.

Photo Credit: © Temis | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Mat provided a thorough assessment of the website including page by page design and copy suggestions.

We have already begun implementing his suggestions and look forward to completing them all.

You can read his full assessment at Split Strategy.

Split Strategy offers detailed, free assessments of your website. Visit Split Strategy and get your free assessment.

We are working on transcribing all the audio from our video tutorials. Following is the transcription for the Managing Links and Link Categories video tutorial.

On the web you’ve seen on various blogs the list of links to other sites. The default that comes installed with WordPress is links to other WordPress sites. The category they are all put in is called Blogroll. You might want different links and a different category or categories. So let’s go do that.

First let’s come into the dashboard and we’ll go to links and link categories. It’s easier to understand if we just create a category and then put links into it. So let’s put in Joel’s Sites and down here in Slug it’s just the same text. You use dashes for spaces. In fact you can put anything you want there; but web friendly so it doesn’t have punctuation.

We’ll add that category and now we have a new category. Let’s add a new category: other sites. We’ll add that category and then we’ll add a new link. Type in the name and the web address and a description. We can now add it to the correct category. Then click Add Link. Add a link to another category.

Then go to Links on the dashboard and you’ll see all those originally in the Blogroll plus those in our categories. To use links we’ll go in the dashboard to Appearance; then Widgets. Drag the Links widget over to the Main Sidebar on the right. We have options to show all links or just a category. There are other settings as well. Now click Save.

We can also add another set of Links and show those from another category if we like. Now we’ve gotten written of the default Blogroll category and created two categories of our own links with links in them. You can play around with links and categories and use them in various places.

Joel D Canfield, Spinhead.com with another WordPress tutorial.

To see the full video, visit the WordPress Tutorial page and click on “Managing Links and Link Categories”.

Want Personalized Help?
What if you could ask me as many questions as you want, all month long? Yes, for $100, you can email me as many questions as you want about WordPress all month long, and I’ll answer in enough detail to allow you to get the work done. For a complete list of all video tutorials available and to sign up for the Monthly Concierge Q&A for $100, visit the WordPress Tutorial page. 

We are working on transcribing all the audio from our video tutorials. Following is the transcription for the Changing Basic Widget Settings video tutorial.

Today we’re going to modify widget settings such as Pages, Categories, Recent Comments, Recent Posts, Top Posts & Pages. Widgets usually have options we can configure. Categories for instance. We can give that a title so let’s call it Blog Categories. We can check all the options, Save, and see what they do.

Now at the website it says Blog Categories and instead of a list it’s a drop down and it’s got the number of posts in that category.

Recent Comments – again we can title it to whatever we want and save it. We go back over to the website and now the Comments are titled something different. Every widget has configurable options, usually at least the title.

Play around with widgets. Learn how to configure their options. Remember, if you want to remove a widget temporarily but keep the settings, drag it down to Inactive Widgets. If you want to remove a widget and get rid of it completely, drag it back to the Widgets section on the left. Go back to your website and you’ll see the widget is gone.

Joel D Canfield, Spinhead.com with another WordPress Tutorial.

To see the full video, visit the WordPress Tutorial page and click on “Changing basic widget settings”.

Want Personalized Help?
What if you could ask me as many questions as you want, all month long? Yes, for $100, you can email me as many questions as you want about WordPress all month long, and I’ll answer in enough detail to allow you to get the work done. For a complete list of all video tutorials available and to sign up for the Monthly Concierge Q&A for $100, visit the WordPress Tutorial page. 

We are working on transcribing all the audio from our video tutorials. Following is the transcription for the Updating WordPress video tutorial.

If you’ve been using WordPress for any length of time, you’ve seen the message “WordPress 3.5 (or other version) is available! Please update now.” But before you update be sure you backup your database and your theme. I’ve never had a problem updating WordPress. That doesn’t mean I never will. That doesn’t mean you won’t. Whether you use plugins or do it the geeky way through FTP and database tools, back up your database and your theme before you do this update.

Once you’ve backed everything up, click the link to update on your dashboard, then click Update Now. Wait patiently while it is downloaded, unzipped, and applied. Then read all the fascinating information about the new version. In a day or two you can delete that backup if you like. Enjoy your new updated, upgraded version of WordPress.

Joel D Canfield with another WordPress tutorial from Spinhead.com.

To see the full video, visit the WordPress Tutorial page and click on “Updating WordPress (back up your database and theme folder first!)”.

Want Personalized Help?
What if you could ask me as many questions as you want, all month long? Yes, for $100, you can email me as many questions as you want about WordPress all month long, and I’ll answer in enough detail to allow you to get the work done. For a complete list of all video tutorials available and to sign up for the Monthly Concierge Q&A for $100, visit the WordPress Tutorial page. 

How would you like to have a ready-to-use no-brainer zero-hassle blog and website?

What if it included hosting for a year including babysitting all the WordPress security updates, your own domain name, and WordPress professionally installed, including all the plugins and setup I normally do for myself? It’s our Basic Package but without content (which you can add at any time) at a savings of $200. Like this:

Ready Set Go

Instant Blogging

$300

And even better: we’ll hand you the keys in 2 business days. (It’ll probably be even sooner, but we won’t make a promise we can’t keep, and once in a great while, some of the bits take 24 hours to happen.)

That’s it: everything you need to get blogging and build your own website, right now, for $300.

Questions? You know what to do.

Also, March 1st was the 11th anniversary of the web design company’s first website. Despite the years and a lotta changes in between, it still feels a bit like this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010301084836/http://www.spinhead.com/