WordPress® For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 6. Setting Up Blogging Base Camp

In This Chapter

• Finding and buying a domain name

• Finding Web hosting

• Brushing up on FTP

• Installing WordPress

Before you can start blogging with WordPress.org, you have to set up your base camp. Doing so involves more than simply downloading and installing the WordPress software. You also need to establish your domain (your blog address) and your Web hosting service (the place that houses your blog). Although you initially download your WordPress software onto your hard drive, your Web host is where you install it.

Obtaining a Web server and installing software on it are much more involved projects than simply obtaining an account with the hosted version of WordPress that's available at WordPress.com (covered in Part II). You have to consider many factors in this undertaking, as well as cope with a learning curve, because setting up your blog through a hosting service involves using some technologies that you may not feel comfortable with at first. This chapter takes you through the basics of those technologies, and by the last page of this chapter, you'll have WordPress successfully installed on a Web server with your own domain name.

Establishing Your Domain

You've read all the hype. You've heard all the rumors. You've seen the flashy blogs on the Web powered by WordPress. But where do you start?

The first steps toward installing and setting up a WordPress blog are making a decision about a domain name and then purchasing the registration of that ...