Blogging is a wonderful way to share your experiences and knowledge with others.
In this article you will learn how to create your own blog with WordPress – with tips and tricks from our experience with Indojunkie of course.
1 | Think of a theme
What should your blog be about? Do you already have a suitable name? Before you can create your own blog, it helps if you can answer these questions in advance.
Maybe you’ve been thinking about a certain topic for a while anyway and now you’d like to get started. Very good. If not, no problem. Grab a pen and paper and brainstorm something.
When it comes to blogging, you can say that niche sites have many advantages – especially when looking abroad. Topics of online sports betting will allow you to learn more about the local life, fan culture, and their everyday life. When writing a niche site you develop a profound knowledge (expert status) about a destination or a certain kind of local habits. The same applies, of course, to other subject areas.
In which subject area do your friends often ask you for advice (e.g. nutrition, coffee, image editing, cosmetics, a particular sport or tech gadgets)?
What things have you been dealing with in your free time for a while now? What are your hobbies (e.g. traveling, yoga, dream catcher crafting or triathlon)?
Do you often have to deal with a certain problem in your life (e.g. back pain, receding hairline, hair loss, insomnia, depression, migraine, etc.)
Those questions could bring you closer to your potential topic for a niche blog.
But: A niche is like a relationship. Once you have decided on a certain topic, you won’t get out of it that quickly. So you commit yourself to a topic without knowing if you still want to do this niche after several years.
And if something “happens” in your niche (e.g. tourism slump due to natural disasters, terrorism or political unrest), your blog could disappear from the scene overnight.
If you don’t want to commit yourself to a niche, then you can of course always tackle a more open topic and perhaps a specific topic will emerge for you over time.
Also here: https://cavanisfriseur.de/folge-28-blog-tipps-und-tricks/
2 | Decide on a name
It is best to write down several ideas for your name. In the meantime, some of your name ideas for your blog may already be taken.
The more creative and imaginative you are with your name, the better your chances are of finding something that has not yet been assigned.
If you have a more open topic, you should take a more abstract approach to naming your blog. With the name “Indojunkie” we have already clearly defined a theme (or niche). If we were to blog only about New Zealand overnight, the name would be a little obstructive and confusing for readers.
With some name ideas in your pocket you are well prepared to really start your first own blog.
To check whether a blonde name is still available as a so-called domain (e.g. indojunkie.com), you can use a tool like Namecheck.
There you just enter your desired name and the tool checks for you free of charge which domain extensions like .de, .com, .org are still available. It also shows you if and with which social media the username is already taken.
The domain ending is not that important. But with .de (for Germany), .com or .net you will never do anything wrong.
n short time there are also some new domain extensions. These include .blog and also .space. These could also be interesting for you.
Please also make sure that you do not violate any existing name and trademark rights when choosing a name. For example, you should not call your blog adidasreise.de or mitnutellaumdiewelt.de or something like that. Because Adidas and Nutella are protected trademarks.
A search at the German Patent and Trademark Office can help you to identify any existing trademark rights. However, only attorneys can give you legally binding information.
If you would like to register your blonde name as a protected trademark at some point in the future, you could also keep this aspect in mind when choosing your name. Because not every name can be protected as a trademark.
Note: Of course, it is also possible to move your blog to a new domain (e.g. from indojunkie.com to asienjunkie.com) with a new name later on, but there are a few technical details to be taken into account in order to lose as few visitors and backlinks as possible. But more about that later.
3 | Register the domain and sign up for the hosting package
Next, you need to register your blonde name as a domain and sign up for a hosting package. You can usually do both directly through a provider. You should have about 5 Euro per month available for this.
Of course, you also have the possibility to take advantage of free offers. Providers like wordpress.com, tumblr.com, and blogger.com make it possible.
But if you want to use your blog not only to describe how good your last coffee tasted, you should not (!) use such services. In the medium term, they limit you and your blog more and you become fully dependent on them. We had our first blog on MySpace until it was suddenly shut down at short notice. More about the disadvantages of most free blogging services can be found here.
Indojunkie.com therefore runs through its own web hosting provider (All-inkl.com) and uses the free content management system WordPress.org. You can easily install it with a few clicks (at least with All-inkl and some other providers).
And don’t worry: You can change your web hosting provider at any time!
Important: WordPress.org must be distinguished from wordpress.com
Website of wordpress.org (our recommendation!)
Website of wordpress.com
You will find the advantages of wordpress.org very well summarized in the following infographics.
4 | Reserve your name in social media
After you have registered your domain, you can reserve your blonde name for yourself in social media – before anyone else does.
Just pick the channels that are right for you. If any of them are already taken, that’s not too bad either.
Then you can still secure a halfway matching username by adding an additional abbreviation (e.g. the domain extension .de) or an attached “blog” to your name.
Indojunkie is registered with the same name on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. However, just a year ago we were on Facebook under Indonesiablog: Indojunkie accessible. So you can change your name at any time.
The problem with name changes on Instagram: As soon as you change your name, you lose the links to you, because Instagram does not (yet) have a redirect.
If you don’t like social media, that’s ok too. After all, you always have to ask yourself if it’s worth the effort, if it makes sense and if you want to share your data with different channels.
5 | Install and set up WordPress
The nice thing about WordPress is that you can design your blog very well according to your ideas.
Besides the possibility of choosing a nice layout for your blog (= theme), you can also add additional features to your website with so-called plugins (e.g. automatic back-ups, sliders, newsletter subscription, and much more).
Especially with plugins and the extension of additional functionalities, you will quickly reach your limits with other free blogger tools.
However, you need to give yourself a little time to get familiar with WordPress. There are several possibilities on the internet that make it much easier for you to get started with WordPress.
If you take one or two hours from the beginning, you will already get a good basic understanding of the possibilities of WordPress.
Online course: Free trial course “Become a Blogger” and paid advanced course “Blog Expansion” at Blog Wings (get a 20 Euro discount on the advanced course with the savings code INDOJUNKIE20)
Kindle E-Book: Create your first own WordPress blog (step by step to join) at Amazon
Udemy courses: At Udemy there are some good blogging courses, which are often available at a reduced price
There are several ways to install WordPress. The easiest one is if your hoster offers a 1-click installation. Then you are usually up and running in a few minutes.
To manage your WordPress blog, sign up for writing new posts after installation and for everything else at www.deinedomain.de/wp-login.php. Finally, you take your domain name and add “/wp-login.php” at the end. Here you log in with the access data you entered during the 1-click installation. Then you can start.
Install WordPress e.g. with 1-Click-Installation in the administration interface of your web hoster
Log in to WordPress on your domain (www.deinedomain.de/wp-login.php)
Please don’t be surprised if your website doesn’t look so great at the beginning. This can be changed very quickly by installing a different WordPress theme.
You can do this under the menu item >> Design >> Themes >> Add. You can also find many free and paid premium themes at Themeforest.
With the GeneratePress Theme you can, for example, create a complete website with demo content in a few clicks.
Under >> Plugins you can install new plugins and add more features to your WordPress Blog.
You can create your first blog post under >> Posts >> Create.
Basically, you can start right now and start exploring the other possibilities of WordPress step by step. Because what is it called?
Create a blog: Further steps for setting up WordPress
General information about your blog (under >> Settings >> General)
Create navigation menu (click on >> Design >> Menus)
Change boxes in the sidebars next to blog posts (= widgets, goes under >> Design >> Widgets)
Change link structure (>> Settings >> Permalinks with recommendation of the selection “Post name” e.g. https://indojunkie.com/beispielbeitrag/)
Show a blog or a page on the home page? (>> Settings >> Read)
WordPress blog creation
By the way, this is the “back-end” of this article on WordPress
Useful plugins to extend the functions of your blog
For WordPress, there are now well over 50,000 plug-ins that you can use to add useful features to your blog.
However, not all plugins are secure and comply with the data protection regulations of the EU (DSGVO). Therefore, you should not install countless plugins.
Furthermore your website slower and slower with increasing number of plugins (loading time) and more prone to errors, if for example two plugins do not “get along” with each other and your site is destroyed e.g. during an update.
Nevertheless the plugins are of course what makes WordPress so attractive. Even without much programming knowledge you can easily implement extensions like an online store, an additional back-up system, automatic tables of contents, product boxes with automatically updated prices for Amazon and many more.
But in a way you make a compromise with every additional plugin. You get new features relatively easily, but you have to accept that your site may load a bit slower or that the plugin is a security hole. You save the costs for a web developer and have an interface that allows you to put content on the net without help from others.
For a blog that you run primarily for yourself, this is no problem in my opinion. Then it’s better to create your own blog without high costs and with fun than to have to pay for every little thing directly into your wallet.
Of course, if you want to open a new online bank with sensitive customer data or work on your new Facebook, you probably shouldn’t use WordPress or any plugins.
At this point I would like to introduce you to a few blogger plugins that have served me well so far:
Add Widget After Content – So that you can automatically display content like a donation box below each post
Cookie Notice – Cookie notice for your website
Table of Contents Plus – for automatically generated tables of contents
tinyCoffee – dispenser function through coffee
wpSEO / Yoast SEO – Plugins as help for search engine optimization
TablePress – Plugin to create beautiful tables
Classic Editor – deactivates Gutenberg Editor and activates the classic editor for pages/postings
Prosodia VGW OS for counters (VG WORT) – to integrate VG WORT counters for authors
UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin – Simplified solution for backups and restoring the website to an earlier date
All In One WP Security & Firewall – Easy-to-use solution for additional security features of your WordPress installation
WooCommerce – Online Shop System for WordPress
WooCommerce Germanized – Customization help from WooCommerce for legally compliant online stores in Germany
Since the WordPress topic itself is relatively inexhaustible and many different ideas or problems can arise, I don’t want to go further into depth here. Otherwise this post will quickly become a book.
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Install WordPress Blog Plugins
So you can install plugins on your WordPress blog.
Create a Blog: Help with technical stuff
Especially the setup of WordPress is not so easy at the beginning. If you need structured help, there are really some good sources available now.
This will give you a good basis and avoid frustration when something doesn’t work out the way you want it to. But in general you can find almost everything on the net. Only maybe not at first go and often not structured.
Online course with the Blog Wings
At BLONG WINGS you can take a complete course on becoming a blogger. So that you can find out if the course is something for you, there is a free trial course for everyone. There you will already learn the most important basics for the beginning with WordPress.
If you want to learn more, you can take an optional advanced course. In this course, other topics are covered that are important for future bloggers. Among other WordPress skills are SEO (search engine optimization), data protection or media and photo tips.
So you are very well prepared for the beginning. In addition to the video tutorials you will also get step-by-step instructions and checklists. So you keep the overview.
To the online course Blog Wings
E-Book: Create WordPress Blog
If you travel a lot with the Kindle and are looking for a small price for your first WordPress blog, you’ll find some very good e-books in the Kindle Shop.
A very recent and newly released WordPress guide is the one by Chris and Sebastian. In it they describe how to build a website with WordPress step by step and with many screenshots.
You don’t even have to sign up for a webhosting package to get started, because you can also use the test account of Allinkl for pure testing. How to do this is described in their e-book “Create your first own WordPress blog: That’s the way to do it – it’s easy to join in.”
As WordPress Theme they use GeneratePress, which is available for free at WordPress. If you need some additional features or want to import a complete demo website with ready-made content for customization in a few clicks, you can also use the Premium Extension with support. This makes many things even easier, but is completely optional.
In it you also explain some background information and concepts around WordPress, so that you definitely develop a good basic understanding of the WordPress world. All in simple and understandable language, so you don’t have to be a technical geek.
To the e-book
Technical support
If you only want to concentrate on the essentials and don’t feel like the technical side of things, there are now a number of freelancers or agencies who can help you set up and manage a (WordPress) blog.