In luck, that’s Actually, what we’re going to cover here today on The Journey All right Alex now with Building your first blog, you really have to figure out what do you actually wan na write about, So my greatest passion is food Eating it Yeah eating it talking about it, seeing it whatever Right on.
So that’s a Good thing to blog about, there are tons of food bloggers out there. Hopefully you’ll get some free food out there. Absolutely I mean that’s what I’m hoping for, but once you figure that out you wan na really figure. Out who your audience is, who do you wan na serve? So is there a type of food That you like to blog about, I would say, probably Just a new up-and-coming restaurants in the area, So your audience is more.
The Trendier people, the foodies, The Millennials The Millennials like us, So that’s super important to figure out what your actual blog is going to be about and who your audience is because you have to be Targeted with your message, If you try to serve everyone, you actually end up serving no one. It’s like trying to boil the ocean, you just can’t. Do it All right. The next thing, To really think about is understanding why you Actually want to start this blog’cause there’s a lot of work involved so Alex.
Why do you want To start this blog Well, I just love to write So it’s a great outlet for some creativity and also just to you, Know try new food options. I dig it. I dig it So now that you have Those questions answered the next part of really starting. Your blog is figuring out what the The name of it is going to be, and the branding Now do you have an idea of What your name is going to be?’cause, I have an idea Yeah.
What do you think I should name my blog, So I already checked the domain name. Alexeatsfood.Com is available. It’s perfect So the blog Alex eats food right. So I think that’s What we’re going to make today So with that name, if you’re struggling on trying to figure out What your own name is, we got a article up here on naming that’ll definitely help you out, But to carry on with that. The next portion of it comes branding.
Your brand is Literally, every single aspect of your blog, That’s the the way you talk on It that’s the images you use the text, the font, literally everything, so you wan na try to keep that consistent. The more consistent you Are with your branding, the more people are easily Able to recognize you right like if you see Like GoDaddy’s color, the green and orange you Instantly think GoDaddy or like the red and yellow Colors, do you think of McDonald’s Mcdonald’s right Alex eats food Alex eats food.
Look at that All right, so the last thing You need to ask yourself before you actually start going: Into building the website is figuring out, do you want just a blog, or do you want a full-on Website with the blog included so Alex, which one do you want, I think I want to keep it Simple, just do the blog for now so that way I can still Focus on all the food eating Right, like super important Yeah So we’re going to go Ahead and show you guys a quick demo, let’s go check it out, All right Alex so we’re About to make your blog here, I’m going to take you through Actually, installing WordPress on a hosting account There’s a difference between wordpress.
Com hosting and Self hosted WordPress Now for most business owners. I would definitely recommend a self hosted WordPress. This is basically you going to a hosting Provider buying hosting and installing WordPress on top of it Sounds like a lot of work. But it’s actually pretty easy to do so check it out. So inside a cPanel most providers Have it you’re going to look for a thing called Installatron? There’s lots of apps to choose from you! Click WordPress Install this application, then it’s going to give you a Lot of different options: We have our domain name, Here, alexeatsfood.
Com directory leave blank you don’t Wan na, like slash something just wanted the domain. You have the username and password here, your Email, you can update that as you need to, And then you click install at the bottom Wow. Okay, easy enough! All right! So you’ve never built a WordPress site before right. Right So brand-new, so the cool Thing about WordPress is that you can access It literally anywhere you want to So where’s kind of your Favorite places to work I like to write on my blog Whenever I’m, you know at home, At home, Yeah Just chilling out Yeah I, like coffee shops, Right And we’re working there So I can access it there, which is cool, so you Go to your domain name and then forward.
Slash WP, dash admin, it’ll be a login screen. I’r Cheating and doing like a little one, click login here inside of cPanel. So now there’s a get started: wizard we’re going to skip past that Just because you may not have that get starting wizard With your hosting provider, so I’ll hit, no thanks, So this is WordPress. It can Seem overwhelming there’s lots of stuff here to choose from, but I think the very first thing that we Need to do is choose a theme for your site.
Okay, So a theme is basically Like how you want your site to look, feel and function, Okay, Are there different things? That I can choose from There are tons, so you go To appearance and themes you have some default ones here I would recommend installing your own [ Alex ], Okay, [ Nealey ], But I’m going to have You kinda choose your own, we’re going to go to the most popular here and we’ll just tell me when I’ll, let you pick whatever one you want [ Alex ].
I like this one [, Nealey ], all right, so [ Alex ] Welcome to Sydney [ Nealey ], we’re going To Sydney, let’s do it so you mouse over, it click install! So then, once it’s installed, You click activate and then you’ve just installed a theme. [ Alex ], Okay, Super simple, all right, so After themes, we want to kind of check out some plugins, so plugins are basically little add-ons to your website.
Okay, So you can literally do Almost anything with the plug-in there’s that old phrase There’s a plug-in for that. We actually made a article On our favorite plugins, You wan na check it out, but I’ll show you how to install a plug-in. It’s pretty much the same. As installing a theme So plugins add new and then It’s going to show you some of the featured plugins here then we’re going to go to Popular I’ll, let you kinda check it out.
So, let’s check out, we Definitely want people to find your website, so We’ll install Yoast SEO here and just like that. We’re Going to click install So once you do install Again same thing activate and then that plug-in is done All right. So that’s installing A plug-in super simple, but let’s get to the real Meat of making your blog and that’s the post. So what do you wan na Make a post right now: Yeah: let’s do it Cool.
So where does a place that you recently ate at, or maybe your Favorite place in Austin: Let’s go with Hopdoddy great burgers, So super simple mouse Over posts and go add new, then we’re going to go to the editor, and this is going to be where you can basically start writing all your content. So how do you spell Hopdoddy? Is it Hop Hit daddy (, laughs, ) I can’t type Hopdoddy Cool Hopdoddy, exactly as it sounds, So you put your title here, you can add all your content.
Look at all this great content content. I’r writing. This is really great content, I’m just the best here all the words Guys, my blog is going to Be a lot better than this Super hot fire all right and then so. This is what was called The Gutenberg editor now it’s just really Called the page editor, You can add all your stuff Here so, as you see, I just started typing there’s this Little plus guy right here and you can add even more content.
So maybe you want to start adding pictures of your restaurant or the Restaurants to eat at rather or the food you eat, you do so here and just add your image and then you can choose from the media library. Okay, I don’t have anything the media library, No Hopdoddy picture, so I’m going to grab just A picture of a burger just for example’s sake when you are at Pexel.Com And just type in burgers see what pops up [ Alex ], And these are All free images right, [, Nealey, ], Yes, these are all free images makes it super helpful, especially If maybe you’re not doing food reviews, but you Have to have the image maybe seen some cool stock photos.
[ Alex ] Yeah, absolutely [, Nealey ]. This all look Delicious and I’m hungry all right, so I’m going to Download this really quick Cool, what’s cool about pexels too, is that these photographers are Giving their photos for free, if you want to support them, you can donate or follow them on Instagram, which is pretty cool. Very cool A little kick back there and then, once you have your image: You’re going to upload it, there then add your alt text, so alt text is basically What Google can read’cause Google can’t Understand when actual images, so we have to tell it so Super awesome, burgers And then select, and then we have our post and then, as you see here, we installed Yoast SEO.
So there’s a little section to update your search engine. Title search engine descriptions all that good Stuff And now last, but not Least, one of the more important things to think about with your post is to have a featured image. Basically, so when you have your site right and it’s not just text You have that little image there to capture it. Okay Make sure you’re on the document. Tab go down to featured Image set featured image and I’m going to be lazy and Just choose the same image: [ Alex ] Burgers all over the place, [ Nealey ], burgers, burgers burgers and then, when you’re done, you can publish or if you say, you’ve created A bunch of content, you don’t want them all published at Once you can actually schedule it right here, [ Alex ], Oh nice, [, Nealey, ], So publish when do you want this to publish [ Alex ] On Friday? [ Nealey ] Friday, all right! So let’s check it out all right.
So obviously the title we’re going to have to update a little bit. ( laughs, ) [ Alex ]. That’s not me! [ Nealey ], But then here’s Here’s, your blog post, so the feature image always shows first and then your content, And then your feature image, you have comment boxes, so your visitors can go and add. Their own two cents or say that is a super awesome burger, I’m just super hungry now, but let’s check out a couple other places on WordPress [ Alex ]; Okay, All right, so I’m going to Show you guys widgets And what exactly do widgets do? Widgets are a WordPress’ best friend, So on your blog post, you saw That there was that sidebar with not a lot of real content, which is kind of default generic stuff.
So if you go to appearances, And then widgets, this is basically all this content you can have on your sidebar and on your footer. Some themes may give you More options for sidebars, especially if you have Woocommerce, you could have the sidebar just for your blog post. You don’t want your blog post Just have like products you wan na have post, but you Want your products to show other related products, things like that.
Got it [ Nealey ], So you can Easily just get rid of stuff, you don’t want by clicking and dragging and then something else To really check out is the the customize tab. Most themes, especially the Free themes will have all the options to really Design and style your site right there, I’m just just Going to give you a quick overview of what this looks like, So this Sydney theme has a ton of options, so I was actually a little surprised.
You can’t have all your stuff Here, it’s your site, title your header area, things like That your homepage settings, so this is super important, so You’re going to have your latest posts show up, So let’s go ahead and go back all right. So let’s check out your website So again just click the my Blog that little shortcut to get to your website [ Alex ] Nice. So why does It say create your menu here in the top right corner, Because we need to Create a new menu here so that menus can be your navigation.
So, like your home links, Your about contact all that good stuff, You either click it there. If You’re on the front of site or if you’re in the Dashboard its appearance and then menus. You can Add your stuff here so it looks like we have Menu already kind of created, we have home and then sample page. I don’t want sample page to Show up so I’m going to go ahead and just remove that And then go ahead and click create menu and once you do you’ll See at the bottom here it shows menu settings So you can auto add pages so, as you add like “, an about” or “ contact” things it’ll automatically come here, so you don’t have to and then Display location primary menu is so it will actually appear up there.
[ Alex ], Okay, [ Nealey ]. So if we go primary, Menu and save and now check out the site, it’ll show home [ Alex ], Okay, [ Nealey ], just like that, then We have your awesome, Hopdoddy post with all this randomness Grand in hello world right there then default post there. So what does it mean when it says uncategorized right there? I almost forgot so Every post has a category, so you could have like burger restaurants or you can have ice cream places whatever you want it to be So by default.
WordPress Doesn’t know what to put so it’s going to have an uncategorized category, so you go to post categories. And then just click quick edit, we’re going to just type in burgers here, make it nice and simple But as you add posts, you can add content here. For categories or inside the post itself, [ Alex ] Okay, so now one of the issues with Having a blog is potentially the amount a spam you might get, there are BOTS out there that Just go out and just basically add just nonsense posts Trying to get links back to their site, So how do I avoid that? So there’s a few things you can do so most of the time WordPress Will come pre-installed with the plug-in called Akismet Anti-Spam? You can sign up and do that.
Otherwise you can do Like a captcha plug-in that make sure that they’re, an Actual person on your website and commenting plugins like Disqus, which is like facebook Login or Twitter login is definitely good to help Prevent some of that stuff too So earlier you showed me That SEO plug-in you know how do I make sure that my Content is going to be seen Yeah, let’s actually check out Yoast. So if you go over to your Page we wan na go back to edit it again, So you can either click Directly on it or click edit here so under Yoast, It’s going to give you a lot of recommendations and Things like that, like again, I have nonsense here.
Just For the sake of this you’re, the writer I’r going to, let you create here Will work the magic later, But it’ll take a little snippet Here for you, so by default it’s going to have title page. Separator and site title so you can get rid of this and do Hopdoddy. My favorite burger place. Review or whatever you want it to be, [ Alex ], Okay, [ Nealey ]. It’s going to give You a little kind of wheel, the more content, the Better see it goes to green [, Alex ] Wow green is good [, Nealey, ], Basically and It’s going to give you a little snippet of how it’s going to Look on search engines.
You want a lot of content. That’s attention-grabbing and has kind of your focus keyword, so your focus key would Really be like Hopdoddy review, you wan na make sure You have that in there And then your Meta Description, Like it says, please provide a meta description by Adding a snippet below, basically it’s a quick little Snippet of what someone’s going to get out of your content, if they read it, you wan na keep It engaging but again make sure you have whatever your Focus word is, for you, it’ll, be a hopdoddy review, so have that somewhere in there as a business owner your page, your post, You’ll wan na make sure that you have some type of focus word for that page, whether it’s a review or An “ about us” or a service and include it in your Description and your title And then you can kind of go Down, there’s SEO analysis.
It’s going to give you a lot of information and you can just Go down the rabbit hole or just clicking all this stuff I’ll leave that for another article. Actually, we did a article on SEO if you wan na check it out right here, [ Alex ] Whoa. So why Does it say not secure there in the top left corner [ Nealey ], Because Technically, it’s not secure, so really I mean it’s Secure, like the information on there is fine, but with WordPress you have that WP dash admin where you log in Right, so it’s not secure! So if you enter in your Username, your password that information is sent over Plaintext on the Internet, So if there’s a man in the Middle attacks someone’s, what’s called sniffing, Captures that information it’s out there super yeah its rough Super important, if you have like a type of shop where you are Taking credit card information or just personal information, So that can be easily fixed.
By getting an SSL certificate, so if you do enter user name, And password it’s sent over the internet so I’ll jumbled up. So even if someone grabs It they have no idea what the heck it means. Okay And then on top of just Really just safety and security. You always want to make Backups, especially with a blog and you’re constantly adding stuff, are you planning to post How many times a week or how many times a month, I’m planning on posting Probably about once a week: Okay, so that’s like 52 posts a year! So if something were To happen to your site, all those posts are gone So make sure you have some Type of backup service, most hosting providers, will Have something for you or you can find something third-party, but it’s always easier to do.
With your hosting provider, since it’s all usually automated But you want to protect all this time invested into this project, make sure it’s just not gone in the blink of an eye. Right All right, so these are Just the basics of building your first blog there again There’s lots of options to kind of go through and make it your own like. We still need to Update the the title, and then it comes with navigation colors things like that at least This has a solid foundation for you to build your first site and then from here it’s Just exploring that’s kind of the fun of WordPress There’s so much to explore, so you can never stop learning Perfect.
Well, thanks for all the help, and let us know in the comments below what articles you guys want to See and be sure, while you’re down there make sure you like the article and subscribe to our blog as well. This is The Journey we’ll see you next time.
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