Published on January 22nd, 2020 | by Alina.G

Five Essential Steps to start a Blog in 2020

Blogging has never been easier than nowadays! People blog for so many reasons. They either want to practice marketing strategies or just to share a piece of their soul online. Think about your blog as your home. The blog’s homepage is the place where you welcome readers, and your posts & pages are the rooms with a view.

Personal websites usually show someone’s talents and blogging ideas in various forms and styles. In another train of thought, what’s your blog about? Have you got yourself a budget idea? If this is your first attempt to start a blog in 2020, follow these five essential steps that will guide through.

1. Blogging platform

The first thing to do is to establish on which blogging platform you want to start customizing your site. Without a budget, maybe you want to try something free, and with time passing, opt for a premium service.

Everyone has heard about WordPress. The largest blogging platform, world-wide. But, have you ever considered others, too?

WordPress.com – free and premium
WordPress.org – free and premium
Wix – free and premium. Has the possibility to buy a domain.
Blogger – free and premium.
Medium – free and subscription.
Squarespace – premium.
Weebly – free and premium
Strikingly – premium
uKit – premium

And the list could go on. If you only publish only writings, probably Medium is a fit for your demands. It’s important to note the difference between CMS (Content Management Systems) and blog building software that function as a part of a CMS. For instance, WordPress is a CMS, while Wix is not.

If you want to publish video content, text, and images too, to go with WordPress, since it’s the greatest community of developers working together at Automatic, it is constantly updated & improved, and you can browse through a range of free, as well as premium themes. You can test your skills with a free theme and upgrade afterward to a premium one. Furthermore, there are popular markets that sell premium and popular WordPress themes based on niches. For example, if you want to develop a blog-magazine, you would search for magazine or news WordPress themes. On Themeforest, Envato market, you can check out an author’s note based on real customer reviews, and ask pre-sale questions.

If you choose a free blogging platform like WordPress.com, Blogger, or Wix, your data is stored on their own servers. Also, you have limited customization possibilities, restricted SEO capabilities, and high prices. I strongly recommend you to go for a WordPress website, and choose your theme, domain name, and hosting package.

2. Domain Name

By choosing your blog a domain name, you are setting up a resource people will always remember.

Think of a domain as a naming system that is user-friendly oriented and grants easy navigation through the web. Without this option available, we would type IP addresses and large numbers, instead of character strings, named domains.

The domain names are handled by DNS, which refers to the Domain Name System. According to Wikipedia, DNS “delegates the responsibility of assigning domain names and mapping those names to Internet resources by designating authoritative name servers for each domain.”,

You can check out the “How many Domains Are There? – Domain Name Stats for 2020” article to discover the domain names hierarchy.

Domain name providers are not free and have minimum registration periods.

Besides these examples, there are hosting providers that also sell domain names, such as

Dreamhost, BlueHost, or HostGator.

3. Web Hosting

Web hosting refers to the service that stores all the pages and posts of your blog, making them accessible online. Make a Website Hub shows that “hosting involves having your site and content placed on a server, which is a powerful computer capable of serving up your content to multiple users who intend to access it.”

You can host a website in four distinct ways: Shared, Dedicated, Cloud Hosting, or Virtual Private Server. Discover the differences between the web hosting types from this article published by Web Hosting Secret Revealed.

Some of the popular web hosting providers are:

4. Design

The simplest way to have a great design on your website and keep the same style on posts, pages, categories, or menus is to assign a demo layout. This usually comes with pre-defined styling customization created with care by talented web designers that ease your job. However, some people get so excited when designing on themselves, and they forget about the website’s design importance. Creativity also means simplicity. Here are some things you should consider:

User Interface and User Experience
Elements Hierarchy on page
Negative Space
Intelligent Color combinations

5. Content

When referring to content, this implies writing and media too. Images, videos, or podcasts. All in! Alongside an excellent piece of writing, it’s a must to display high definition visuals. For Google Search Engine to love you, don’t forget to pay attention to titles, headings, meta descriptions, and relevant keywords. Also, internal and external linking help you get the magic juice!

Conclusion

Whatever the blogging platform you like the most, the drag and drop functionality, as well as the frontend editing, are now basic requirements. Every blog can become a good-looking and professional one with the necessary tools. Also, you need to remember that a blog shouldn’t be a labyrinth. Your readers come to your blog to be entertained. They seek inspiration to feed their inner thoughts. If things are complicated on your website, they’ll leave and never come back. Amaze the online world with a simple, yet powerful blog!

Tags: blog, blogging, design, domain, hosting, startup, website

About the Author

Alina.G is a Content Marketing Strategist at tagDiv. After a long journey through fine arts, she combines her WordPress passion with native writing skills. Alina is a fun and carrying team player, ready to deal with any challenge.