Nowadays, there are so many platforms where you can start your blog that makes it confusing.
When you are searching via Google, you'll probably find a lot of platforms offer you to start your blog or website for FREE.
For example, you will see some advertisements for Medium, Wordpress.com, Wix...
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All platforms might not be suitable for your project.
For example, some of them are more oriented "personal diary like" website, others can offer features like e-commerce (shopping website), allow to create a professional portal website, create a portfolio for your photography...
Also, you have to make the distinction between the free plan and paid plan based platforms.
They have major differences in features and flexibility.
Keep in mind that "free platform" means that you don't really own the content you are publishing on it.
Your content is owned by the company who runs the free platform.
First, you must choose a name for your website.
Use words that give the main idea of your website.
Try to be simple and make it easy to remember.
Finally, check if the name you chose is not already used by another person.
If it's already taken, I recommend you to think for another name.
If you still want to use the same name, make sure that your concurrence's audience is irrelevant enough.
Because you certainly don't want to confuse your new audience and bring some indirect traffic to your concurrent.
First, you have to decide if you choose a free platform or pay for a web hosting service.
But don't worry, nowadays, it's really easy to install your blog or website by using software (framework) like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, Ghost or else.
I personally recommend you to use Wordpress, it's the more popular and powers 30% of websites on the internet.
Basically, it allows you to create some posts, group them by categories or tags, upload some Media like images to illustrate your posts.
You can customize it like a truly professional blog/website by installing some templates and plugins.
Some of the web hosts already have Wordpress pre-installed.
But to get Wordpress, you can download the zip file from the official website :
A domain name is like a "postal address" but on the internet.
If you have difficulties to choose the right domain name, check my post: How to choose your domain name?
There's a lot of domain registrar services where you can buy your domain name like Godaddy, Name.com, Hostgator...
But I recommend you to buy yours on Namecheap :
There's a lot choice out there.
Most of the Webhost services are also selling domain name with their host plans, but I don't recommend you to buy that kind of products.
It will ties you to them.
And it will be very tedious if you are not happy with them and you want to switch to another service.
The best choice concerning Host Server is a Virtual Private Server (VPS), but it requires some technical knowledge to install it.
For those who just want a fast and operational Webhost, I generally recommend to my business clients :
They are very reliable, they will prevent you from hackers and security attacks that other popular web hosts don't (ex: Godaddy).But for flexibility, if you can, I highly recommend you to go for a VPS like :
The VPS allows you to install many websites on one server for the same subscription without paying extra money.
And what is interesting is that you can add your own software, scripts to automate your business...
You will have to point your domain to your web host.
It will redirect your domain name to the web host when someone is typing it on a browser (ex: Chrome).
Technically, you will have to set your DNS records from your Domain registrar account (ex: Namecheap).
For those who need to install it:
For that, go into your Web host account management panel.
You will generally find a menu with PhpMyAdmin.
To do that, you will need an FTP client program (ex: Filezilla).
It might take a few minutes to upload all the files.
After you submitted the information, you will be asked to set the name of your website and login/password for your website.
You will be able to log in and access to your administration dashboard from it.
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