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How to Start Building a Blog From Scratch Without Coding : A Comprehensive Guide

Even before this COVID pandemic businesses were shifting toward a more digital world. But now it triggered a sudden change in people’s online behavior towards blogging websites that are likely to have a long-lasting effect.

As we already know a blogging website is probably the most effective tool for your web presence. Because it allows you to boost sales by attracting new customers and building brand credibility.

That is why we have decided to come up with this comprehensive yet easy-to-follow guide to help you build your own blog website from scratch. Here, you are going to find everything you need starting from purchasing a domain name, hosting, installing CMS to publishing your very own first blog article. Sounds good?

So, let’s start your first blog website!

7 Steps to Start a Blog

I was really shy about building my first blog. Well, it is long past now. But I know how it feels. You fear that you will not be able to do it. And believe me, this is the reason you are losing so much potential. This guide is for you. You will not need to write a single line of code. Because I will walk you through from here covering every step.

Now, you know what we will need to cover in this tutorial, lets finish this in 15 minutes. No kidding!

Choosing The Right Blogging Platform
- WordPress It Is!
Choosing The Best WordPress Hosting
Settinging Up Your Hosting
Getting Your First Domain
Linking Your Domain With Hosting
Customize Your Blog
Installing Useful Plugins

Step 1: Choose The Right Blogging Platform

First thing first, right? You need to select the right blogging platform for your content management. It will make your life really easy in the long run. I am sure, you have heard about WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.

WordPress It Is!

I am a huge fan of WordPress and I always recommend it to anyone who needs to start their own blog. Following are few simple reasons that will help you fall in love with WordPress…..

WordPress Changed the Web. 75+ million Websites are built on WordPress.
It is totally free. Yap, it is true. The core essence of the open-source plays the role here.
Secure and regularly updated. WordPress is continuously releasing new updates and security patches. That is why more than 30% of the World’s top 1000 sites use WordPress. Even NASA, Esty, Microsoft, PlayStation, Disney, and other big boys use WordPress. So it is gonna be secure for you as well, right?
It is right for everyone. From startup to established, everyone can enjoy the power of WordPress. As I said earlier, CNN uses WordPress, so when you grow, WordPress will still be supporting you.

As you see, startups opting for WordPress as their CMS is the best choice and it will be supporting them even they grow really big. Not to mention the added bonus this CMS offers, it will save a lot of time, effort, and money 🙂

WordPress is cheap when you install it on your website and it takes less than 5 minutes even for a newbie. Basically, you do not need to be a web developer to do it to launch your first website. Absolutely no coding is required to won a successful WordPress-based blog.

Now you know what CMS to choose for, let’s move to the next step.

Step 2: Choose The Best WordPress Hosting

This is one of the vital decisions you need to make before you move forward. This single decision will have a great impact on your website performance and overall outcome for the days come. Here you even can move with a free hosting option or a paid option. But remember you probably pay much for your cable bill every month. Is not your business blog worth or spending few bucks per month? When you know it is crucial for website performance, SEO, and overall outcome?

So you already guess that I will not recommend going with a free hosting alternative for your blog.

Why Should You Avoid Free Blog Sites?

A domain name is a brand identity for you. It is just like a speed dial for your potential clients to reach you. But when you go with a free blog site, well! You do not get the domain name that your business deserves. You will get something like this… ‘yourblog.free-blog-platform.com’. With such a terrible domain name, you will lose brand identity and credibility to your blog site visitors and potential clients. Not to mention a domain name has a significant impact on SEO, social media marketing.

Disadvantage Of Free Blog Platforms

Terrible Domain Name. They got you a terrible URL for your blog that is long, unappealing, and definitely not professional.
Lack Of Credibility. You will have a brand crisis and will lose credibility to your visitors.
You Do Not Own It. Yap, at the end of the day, it is someone else’s property. As you are not paying, they even can delete it anytime and without any prior notice.
No Freedom. Well, it is self-explanatory. It is free, so definitely you can not expect the full features. They will limit you with space, functionality, and features. You may end up not being able to upload all the necessary media files (images, videos) that you feel needed for a good blog post for better visitor conversion.

So it is obvious a free blogging platform has pretty much a bad choice to go with, right? It is better to spend few bucks for a blog’s success.

Well, it is always hard to find a professional and reliable hosting provider. But lucky for you, I have done the hard work to come up with the best hosting for you. WPEngine is the winner here!

Why WPEngine Is The Best Choise?

I believe you realized that WordPress is the right CMS for you. Big boys like NASA, CNN use them. So you need good hosting that actually can help you grow. It should work smoothly with WordPress, secure and reliable. WPEngine meets each and every requirement. Not only that big boys like yelp, Etsy, Hello Fresh use WPEngine to power their website.

WPEngine is the ideal candidate for following reasons….

24/7 support
30+ premium themes (worth of $360)
Free automated migrations
Daily backups
Free SSL and SSH
Advanced security
One-click staging site
Faster site speed with website caching
Threat detection & blocking
Free CDN (worth of $200/year)

Handoff to clients with transferable sites
Activity log & user permissions
Page performance monitoring
Local developer tools
SSH access with WP-CLI, MySQL, and bash
GIT & SFTP connections
Multi-factor password authentication
Up-to-date PHP
Chat support

So it is obvious WordPress and WPEngine go hand in hand. It is the perfect combination and fertile environment for your website’s growth day to come. In the next steps, we will talk about setting up the domain.

Step 3: Setting Up Your Hosting

Click here to visit WPEngine for setting up your blog website. Note: We will receive a commission if you decide to purchase using these links.

Here, click on the Pricing link.
On this page, you will see all the available plans. We recommend going with the STARTUP package. So, click on the “Get Started” button to proceed with the setup.
Here, you can pick either yearly package and save around $60 or pick monthly package. Also will find some additional products/services that you may like. But for startup sites, you do not need any add-ons. So just fill out your account information, then billing information.
At this point, you only need to tick the terms and conditions checkbox at the bottom and hit the Purchase button. Now you will get an email with the login details. Save it for future use.You just become a proud owner of great hosting that will nourish your blow website in the days to come. This is simple and straightforward, right?

Step 4: Getting Your First Domain

Click Here to visit Namecheap to get the domain. We recommend keeping the domain and hosting separately. It is good practice to have a secure online presence. Also, Namecheap is the world’s trusted source of the domain and it is cheap than other domain providers. It also gets you WoisGuard protection for free, which costs you around $10-$16 per year if you get a domain from any other providers out there. Enough talk let’s dive in!

On this page, type your desired domain name and click Search.
If you find the domain name that you like and available click Add To Cart.
Now on the same page at the bottom, the Checkout button will appear. Click on it.
On the next page, you can leave the default settings as it is. We only need the domain, right? So just click Confirm Order on the right/at the bottom.
On the next page, you will need to register an account. So fill out your account information here.
On the next page, you will be asked to enter your payment details.

So you got your amazing domain to start with. Now we will show you how you can add this domain to your hosting. It is fairly easy and will take a minute.

Step 5: Linking Your Domain With Hosting

At this point, you successfully got your hosting and domain ready. Now it is time to do the linking.

Now login to your WPEngine User Portal. Click on Sites then Domains then Add domain.
On the next page, you need to put your domain name and select the option below as “I have purchased this domain“. Then click the Next Button on the right.
On the next page, you will be asked to point DNS for your domain. So click Next.
On the next page, you will find the CNAME value under DNS Details. Copy that.
Now, go back to the Namecheap dashboard. Once you log in on the left you will see a menu called Domain List. Click on it. You will see the list of the domains you have. Click MANAGE the domain for which we will update the CNAME. Now click on the Advanced DNS tab. There, you will see the CNAME, replace the current value with the value we copied from WpEngine, and click on the Tick Mark on the right. It might take up to 48 hours to update the CNAME but my experience says it takes few minutes. So just hang tight for a while. Well, you are officially done with linking your domain with your hosting.
At this point, we need to update the WordPress site URL. It is fairly easy. In WpEngine under sites, now you will see the new site you just have added. Click on the three dots icon on the right. It will pop up some options. Click WP Admin there and it will lead you to your WordPress dashboard.
On the left of your WordPress dashboard find Settings and click on that setting link. All you need to replace the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Adress (URL) with your domain name. Be sure not to add any trailing slash after your domain name.
Well done. Your Blog site is live! You did everything without doing any coding. Now let’s do some aesthetics. We will install a theme and customize it to look professional. So, let’s dive in.

So you got your amazing domain to start with. Now we will show you how you can add this domain to your hosting. It is fairly easy and will take a minute.

Step 6: Customize Your Blog

Here I will introduce the WordPress dashboard and help you improve your blog’s aesthetic by installing a WordPress theme.

An Introduction To WordPress Dashboard

If you are new to WordPress, the dashboard might be overwhelming for you. But worry no more, you will get used to it sooner than you think. Here I will cover the following topics.

Activating WordPress Theme
Writing Your First Blog Post
Introduction To The Medial Library
User Management In WordPress

Activating WordPress Theme

Here we will start out by installing a WordPress theme for our blog website. By default, WordPress got you a theme activated. But it is not enough. So we will change the default theme to a more professional and sophisticated blogging theme. We are going to install Steed theme that is specially designed for blogging websites.

Steed is a lightweight yet powerful theme that comes with the visual editor. So without any coding, you can design a professional and awesome blogging website in no time. Not to mention, being lightweight is one of the SEO-optimized themes out there. You can download the Steed WordPress theme from here.

Writing Your First Blog Post

Introduction To The Medial Library

User Management In WordPress

Step 7: Installing Useful Plugins

At this point, you successfully got your hosting and domain ready. Now it is time to do the linking.

Now login to your WPEngine User Portal. Click on Sites then Domains then Add domain.