Are you an author of thrilling short novels, entertaining travel blogs, humorous stories, enlightening reports, unpopular journalistic articles, or soul-stirring poems? Or, maybe you are a fashion or another type of influencer? Are you addicted to taking photos of natural landscapes or beautiful cityscapes with any hidden meaning that you’d like to share with the world? Is your vocation to be an illustrator or a cartoonist that mocks global injustice? Maybe your civil cause is saving the environment and wildlife? Why not be a deep lover of history, sports, pets, healthy eating, tourism, etc., who would like to offer the world some of their skills, knowledge, and inspiration on your favorite subject?
Did you recognize yourself in the above lines? Yes, you did? OK, then this article is very suitable for you! We will explain to you how you could promote your hobby in the easiest, cheapest, and most efficient way. Thus, you could energize and inspire like-minded people worldwide!
It is Neither Scary nor Difficult
Usually, bloggers or those who use blogs for their hobbies and causes want to concentrate on their vocation. They avoid dealing with tedious technical terms like “web hosting”, “server”, or “domain”. Some are even a little scared of them. Also, no one wants to learn programming languages to build a site on their own.
Fortunately, none of these above is scary nowadays, as we have some great content management systems (CMSs) such as WordPress (WP) and hosting companies such as Seravo.com. They can do all the technical work and take care of the tedious maintenance for you.
Don’t worry, we’ll explain to you everything you need to know.
What is a CMS?
CMS is short for “content management system”. It is any software that makes it quite easy to create and update digital content without any programming language knowledge. And this is what it is about! CMS platforms were made to serve people that want to create a website or blog without practicing any coding.
There are many popular CMS platforms, such as WordPress, Wix, Drupal, or Ghost. But among them, the world leader is WordPress, being used by 64.2% of all sites that are based on any CMS platform and 43.1% of all websites on a global scale. That’s really a lot.
Why WordPress?
The common answer to this question is simple and easy: with it, you don’t need to learn any coding or count on an IT specialist to create and maintain your website. But there are also a few additional and beneficial main features that make it even greater:
- Open-source: WordPress’ source code is available for use or modification by any developer. Being publicly accessible and open for collaboration and improvement by literally anyone, it is the most supervised CMS platform in the world.
- Free: WordPress doesn’t cost anything as it is free to install, modify, and use.
- Easy to use: The platform was made to serve people that are not into coding at all. It is a really great solution for each blogging newbie that wants to focus on posting only.
- Stylish: The set of refined and beautiful themes you could choose from is rich. With them, you could make your blog really very flashy and beautiful, and none would suspect it was made completely for free.
- Media-friendly: With WP you get full media freedom. All media types are welcome there. Textual content, images, or videos – everything you want to apply to your blog post could be added smoothly and easily.
- SEO-chummy: With WP, you could apply the best possible SEO (search engine optimization) practices. By adding hot keywords, your website could appear in the upper positions on popular search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
- Secure: WordPress is among the safest and best-secured CMS platforms. It offers two-factor authentication. Your blog will be safe as long as you keep your passwords secret.
Why is WordPress a Great Solution for Blogs?
Nowadays, when WordPress has developed so much, nearly half of all websites are based on WP. But initially, back in 2003, WordPress was invented by two IT specialists – Matt Mullenweg (from the United States) and Mike Little (from the United Kingdom), to serve only people who make their own blogs.
The fact that WP started as a blogging tool proves that it is extremely suitable for blogs. In the late 00s, many popular blogs in lifestyle, politics, literature, and arts appeared as a result of the invention of WP. The option to create posts easily, to surf between different posts and pages, and to manage posts in different categories made WordPress the most preferred and recognizable blogging tool back then.
What Should you do Before Creating Your WordPress Blog?
There are a few things that you should take care of before jumping into the WordPress world. Here they are.
Step #1: Choose a hosting provider
Have you ever wondered where all the information that a website contains is being saved? This is what the host’s mission is. Hosting providers maintain physical servers that work all the time – 365 days a year, 24/7. This is the physical location where all the website’s data is kept and saved. You could choose your hosting provider by checking their plans’ conditions.
Step #2: Choose a hosting plan
There are 3 main types of hosting plans. When you choose a hosting provider, you also need to choose your plan type.
- Shared: All the information on your site is kept on a server where other users’ websites are also based. For blogs that are yet to be popularized and their traffic is still low, this is the best option as that’s how bloggers could save money from options they don’t really need. Whenever your blog gets more popular and your traffic necessities start to increase, you could upgrade your plan.
- Dedicated: Your blog’s information will be stored on an individual server which you won’t be sharing with other website owners. It is a great option for blogs that are popular worldwide and have tens of thousands of visitors per day. As the server’s maintenance is not shared, you are the only one that will be paying for it. That’s why this is the most expensive plan option, and we wouldn’t recommend it to any beginner blog owner.
- VPS: This kind of server is quite similar to a dedicated server but cheaper. With it, you can have a virtual server providing a large space for your data, as well as a constant possibility for maximum traffic – just like with a dedicated server. The technical difference with a dedicated server is in only one small detail: the virtual server is a small part of a very large physical server. But in no way can the boundaries of your virtual server be breached, and no other user of the same big physical server could affect your traffic. This is the best option for bloggers with a really very huge audience.
Step #3: Choose between WordPress.org and WordPress.com
Probably, this is the first time you noticed that there are two different WordPress domains: an .ORG and a .COM. They both offer the same service, and the difference is just a small detail: WordPress.COM is a little more of a hosting company, and WordPress.ORG is just about the platform itself.
- WordPress.com: It helps you create your blog using the platform with managed WordPress hosting. I.e., WordPress will take care of your hosting, security, and backups. And then, you won’t need to look for another hosting provider.
- WordPress.org: From here you could download the platform and use it for creating and maintaining a blog on your own. You could still use a managed WordPress hosting but from another hosting provider.
Step #4: Decide if you will rent a unique domain address
This is the address that visitors to your blog will enter in the URL bars of their browsers anytime they want to check your new publications. You could either get your unique paid URL address or use the free WordPress.com subdomain.
If you choose the first option, your site will look more glamorous and complete. If you choose the second option, then you will have a great blog again, but without paying for a domain.
We would recommend you choose the free option for the very beginning, as this could save you money. But still, if you want to stand out from the crowd from the start, then you can also get your own unique domain.
Step #5: Choose a hosting plan or package
Be very careful when choosing a hosting plan. Don’t prepay for anything that you are not sure you will use – this is the most important principle to follow, regardless of whether you choose a hosting plan from WordPress.com or from another hosting provider, for example from Seravo.
The price of the hosting plan almost always depends on the type of server: shared, dedicated, or VPS. Usually, hosting companies offer a lower price per month if the hosting is prepaid for a year or for several years. It’s up to you to decide how it would be more convenient for you: to start paying every month (but each month will be more expensive for you) or to pay in advance (you will pay more at once for a longer period, but the monthly fee will be much lower this way).
Of course, it would be best for you to choose the most proper plan or package by evaluating well your motivation, opportunities, and marketing skills (yes, marketing skills are very important even for a blog). Knowing that almost every hosting company offers the convenience of upgrading your plan, we would recommend you bet on the safer side at the very beginning and not prepay too much in advance.
Main Advantages of Using a WordPress Blog
Nothing in the world is just a coincidence. It is no coincidence that WordPress is the most preferred CMS platform for blogs and websites as well. Here are the main reasons why you would enjoy maintaining your blog with WordPress.
Advantage #1: It saves you a lot
Unlike many other similar CMS platforms, WordPress has several features that could help you save a lot of things together, mainly money, time, and nerves. This way, you could save the following:
- Money on IT developers
- Time on building a custom-based website
- Time on posting content through coding
- Nerves when something breaks down and you don’t know how to repair it instantly
- Nerves on waiting for the developer to repair anything
Advantage #2: Superb templates
Choosing the template for your new blog is probably the funniest part of creating it. There is a huge variety of free options. Beautiful and clean, they vary by design, color, and section arrangements. There is even a list of themes specialized for blogging. Anytime a person approaches your website, they will experience a sense of positive marvel.
With WordPress you could be confident that you will not only have a great appearance for your blog but excellent loading speed as well. Many bloggers underestimate the speed as they think that it is important for huge websites only. But this is not actually true. Websites with good speed usually enjoy better rankings on Google and other search engines.
Advantage #4: Useful add-ons
WordPress has some great add-ons. With one of them, you could compress any visual media (images, videos, etc.) that you apply to your blog. Thus, you can reduce the megabytes without affecting the good quality of the images. With another one, you could add a contact form for your fans that would like to reach you. With a third one, you could add a photo arcade showing a gallery of artworks. There is a sea of great add-ons that you could enjoy with WordPress. With them, you could achieve nearly everything to stand out from the crowd.
Any WordPress blog could be improved with add-ons with ease and smoothly. Thus, you could enhance your blog anytime you feel that a change or improvement is needed.
Advantage #5: Posting blogs on social media directly
As you know, the more people subscribed to your blog’s Facebook or Instagram page, the more visitor you will attract to your blog. Social media networks are probably the best possible channel to advertise your blog nowadays. Through them, you could attract potential visitors to your blog. And you could also instantly reach a huge number of people that follow any of your pages on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
WordPress offers an add-on that lets you automatically publish every single new blog post on your social media channels. The only thing you need to do is put your webpage and social media accounts together.
Advantage #6: Mobile responsiveness
Sometimes it is impossible for us to enjoy a blog because the page is not responsive to the device from which we try to reach it. Usually, when we try to open such a site on our mobile phone, the text is very small, and all its content is disproportionate. So, we often postpone visiting the site for another time when we could open it on a desktop computer. But in most cases, we completely forget about it.
There’s another good news about WordPress. All the flashy themes that WP offers are made so they could be reached by all kinds of devices, no matter if desktop, tablet, or mobile. They are regularly enhanced so that they could fit all new device models.
Fast WordPress Web Hosting and Upkeep by Seravo.com
There are already many hosting companies that help you focus entirely on your blog. Thus, you can concentrate only on your hobby as the hosting company takes care of absolutely everything else: technical support of the server, updating software and plugins, privacy protection, and overall security.
Seravo’s experts can take care of all the tedious stuff and help you increase your blog’s performance. You can have both Fast WordPress Web Hosting and Upkeep.
No matter what your concern is, you could contact us anytime. And when we say “anytime”, we really do mean anytime, no matter if at 7 a.m. on a sleepy Sunday morning or at 11 p.m. on the festive New Year’s Eve.
No matter which of the plans you choose, you could count on 24/7 support from our real experts who observe the details carefully and proactively prevent all potential problems that could affect your great WordPress experience. Anytime!