Do You Need To Hire Somebody To Set Up Your Blog? [#8]

2 | Posted In Videos by David

In this Flip Tip, I am answering a reader question submitted by Alex Miller. The question is:

I have no web design experience, do I need to hire a firm to create a blog for me? I want it to be professional looking.

The long answer is in the video. The short answer is: No. You can install WordPress yourself and use a freely available WordPress theme.

Long term, you’re going to want to customize a theme for your site. The most memorable blogs have a custom design. But, new bloggers need to cross one bridge at a time. Don’t get ahead of yourself with hiring designers when you don’t even have that many readers yet. Ultimately, it is your content which is more important than your blog’s design.

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  • http://kkomp.com/ Sharron Field

    When you eventually decide to customise your WordPress theme, you’ll find that you can actually do this from inside WordPress itself. If you prefer the long way round you can also edit the theme by uploading it to your computer, editing it as required, and uploading the edited files to your blog in place of the existing files once you are happy with it.

    WordPress may at first appear rather daunting; particularly previous to installation. Once you’ve uploaded it and edited a file or two to get it running, (Full instructions are available at wordpress.org, and I think Dave’s already done a vid on it, and will probably do more on that too.)you’ll find WordPress to be a very versatile and flexible tool.

    If you learn php too, (I’m still learning.) – well just look at what Dave’s done with this blog and PCMech: The sky’s the limit.

    I’ll just mention, also, that if you or anyone else happen to be using or intending to use, Fasthosts in the UK as a hosting provider; you may have problems setting up a WordPress install on their Windows Home package. If you’re going to use them as your web hosting provider for your blog I recommend their Linux Home or Linux Developer package. Their Linux servers run Red Hat Linux, and setting up a WordPress blog on them is no problem at all. If you already have a Windows Home package with them, just phone them and ask for a transfer to a Linux Home package. It’ll take a few minutes for them to transfer your account to a Linux server, and it won’t cost you any extra.

    From the above paragraph I would guess that Linux servers in general are probably a better bet for a WordPress blog, no matter who the hosting provider. (Someone please correct me if I am wrong.)

  • http://kkomp.com Sharron Field

    When you eventually decide to customise your WordPress theme, you’ll find that you can actually do this from inside WordPress itself. If you prefer the long way round you can also edit the theme by uploading it to your computer, editing it as required, and uploading the edited files to your blog in place of the existing files once you are happy with it.

    WordPress may at first appear rather daunting; particularly previous to installation. Once you’ve uploaded it and edited a file or two to get it running, (Full instructions are available at wordpress.org, and I think Dave’s already done a vid on it, and will probably do more on that too.)you’ll find WordPress to be a very versatile and flexible tool.

    If you learn php too, (I’m still learning.) – well just look at what Dave’s done with this blog and PCMech: The sky’s the limit.

    I’ll just mention, also, that if you or anyone else happen to be using or intending to use, Fasthosts in the UK as a hosting provider; you may have problems setting up a WordPress install on their Windows Home package. If you’re going to use them as your web hosting provider for your blog I recommend their Linux Home or Linux Developer package. Their Linux servers run Red Hat Linux, and setting up a WordPress blog on them is no problem at all. If you already have a Windows Home package with them, just phone them and ask for a transfer to a Linux Home package. It’ll take a few minutes for them to transfer your account to a Linux server, and it won’t cost you any extra.

    From the above paragraph I would guess that Linux servers in general are probably a better bet for a WordPress blog, no matter who the hosting provider. (Someone please correct me if I am wrong.)