Step By Step To Have Your Own Blog For Free

This is probably very basic and majority of people are probably not interested in this post, but I read lately a lot of question about starting a website or a blog in particular which in turn will be used to apply to Google Adsense and hopefully, finger crossed, will be able to bring some steady income to the webmasters.

This probably has to do with the fact that the infrastructure are getting better and better even in the third world countries with their millions or sometimes billions population. This change mean that more and more people are connected to the internet for the first time and start to read bit and pieces that any man and his dog can make decent money of Google Adsense.

The other factor is that Google Adsense currency is US Dollars. The huge different in standard of living of each countries means that pocket money for someone in the US will probably be a life saver for someone in Bandung or Cebu. That’s Indonesia and the Philippine by the way.

While you can use worpress.com or blogger.com to host your blog, there is always this feeling that those space you call “your blog” does not really belong to you, and that the actual owner of the platform can at any given moment decided that they’ve had enough, pull the plug and leave you for nothing. While this is very unlikely, in fact, has never happened, some people still have that tingling sensation, especially when their blogs are starting to pickup PR and off course, traffic.

The other drawback of those blogging platforms is that you cannot use plug-ins and themes unless it’s available there. In other word your liberty is limited to what is given to you.

Most of time, the prospective webmasters are not poor in terms of their standard of living. However, they are poor in a way that they don’t have any money that is accepted by the internet if you will. They probably don’t have or don’t really want to use their credit card online, no money in paypal or moneybooker etc.

To help with that, below are step by step of what you can do to have your own actual blog for practically nothing.

1. First you need a (free) web host. There is a lot of free web host that would satisfy blogging requirement. You can have a look at free webhosts and browse around. The requirement is that it supports php, give you at least 1 MySql database, access to .htaaccess, allows you to use your own domain and NO ADS. If you don’t feel like browsing, I would recommend free host option with byethost. It has the entire required bell and whistles and more. Now, this may not be the super fast hosting with lightning speed servers, but it would be sufficient for your first blog. You can always upgrade your host to a paid scheme or move it altogether when you can afford it. Other nice thing about bytehost is that it gives you access to MX record which combined with Google Apps allows you to have unlimited email address such as yourname@yourdomain.com, yourdogname@yourdomain.com and so on and so on.
2. The next thing you need is a domain name. While you almost have to buy a first level TLD such as .com, .net , .org. You don’t have to if you would settle for other TLD. Right now yo can get a .cc domain for free, just go to www.co.cc and apply there. If you don’t like second level TLD and can afford a .com, you usually can get them at GoDaddy for less than USD 10. After you get your domain name, you just need to point the name server to you free host ns1 and ns2. You need to allow 24 hour for DNS refresh.
3. After that you need to go back to your free host and add the domain you just got from their control panel. It should be something like “add on domain”. What happen usually that the system will automatically create a folder or directory with the domain name as its name. This directory will be the working directory for your blog.
4. The next step would be to install your blogging platform. I would recommend Wordpress simply because it pretty easy to follow and understood. It also has the most plug-ins and themes available on the internet free of charge. Most servers would have what they call a fantastico type of installer. All you need to do is to click there, select Wordpress, and install it on the root directory.
5. Once it is done, you need to setup a MySql database. If your free host does not provide MySql, you can always use free MySql database service. When you setup your database, you need to take note of the database username, password and hostname.
6. After that you need to set up your Wordpress. The MySql database hostname, username and password info from above needs to be filled in. Things goes well, bam, your blog is done. Wordpress will give you a user name which is usually Admin with a random password. Take not of that password, you’ll need it when you login to the WP admin.

Have a look around inside the WP dashboard, try to make post, comment, change the theme etc. Try to familiarize yourself with WP. You can also click View Site on the top to see what your blog looks like. Once you are confident enough you can download additional themes and plug-ins to enhance your blog.