How to start a WordPress blog? That is a common question that my friends always ask me and in this post, I am going to answer it.
Like I said before in this post: The 3 best blogging platforms for beginners, WordPress has two “versions”: WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
WordPress.com is a free web-based platform where you can start a blog. You only need to create an account to start blogging.
On the other hand, WordPress.org is open-source software that you need to install in hosting to start blogging.
In this post, I am going to show you how to start a WordPress blog on the cloud with Cloudways.
Note: this review contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission if you end up signing up to Cloudways, Namecheap or GeneratePress, at no extra cost to you.
Table of Contents
Why host a WordPress blog on Cloudways?
Because having a WordPress blog in the cloud will give you fast loading times and will help you with the search engine optimization (SEO) of your blog.
The pros of having your blog on Cloudways are:
- A 3-day free trial period.
- You can choose between five cloud infrastructure options: DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Amazon Web Services (AWS), or Google Computing Engine (GCE).
- SSD drives, PHP 7 servers, Nginx/Apache servers, Varnish/Memcached caching.
- Launch multiple apps in one click: WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, etc.
- Pay-as-you-go pricing model.
- Vertical scaling.
- Free site migration, free backups!, free SSL certificates.
- Built-in Cloudways CDN.
- Great customer service.
So in this tutorial, you will learn how to start a WordPress blog on Cloudways. From the very beginning, you will have fast loading times for your blog.
Let me tell you that having a WordPress blog is great because:
- The software is open-source, which means it is free.
- You can make any kind of change on your blog.
- It’s easy to learn.
- Almost every developer knows how to code on WordPress.
- If you don’t know how to code, there are themes and plugins to enhance your blog.
- WordPress is SEO-friendly.
- You have full control of your website.
How to start a WordPress blog?
The following is a step by step process of how to start a WordPress blog.
Open an account on Cloudways
First, we must create an account and for this you must go to start free:
Then you have to sign up.
Once registered, you are already a client of Cloudways.
Now check the email assigned to your account because Cloudways will send an email for you to activate your account.
To verify your account, you must enter your phone number.
Choose your server
Time to choose between the five infrastructure providers that work with Cloudways: DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud.
My recommendation for you is to choose the server near your target audience.
For example, if your target audience is in the United States, choose a server in that country.
In my case, my main target audience is in the United States, and because I also want to target the United Kingdom, I will choose the server in New York.
And I will select DigitalOcean because, personally, I trust that company and up until now I haven’t had any downtime from that company.
By default, DigitalOcean will select a 2GB server for you. In my case, I chose DigitalOcean with a server size of 1 GB and a location in New York. Just click to increase or decrease the size of the server.
Remember, Cloudways is pay-as-you-go and, with this setup, I will only pay $10 per month. This Cloudways review is getting good.
Once your configuration is ready, click on launch now. You will have to wait around 7 minutes for your server to be ready, although it could be ready in a shorter time.
After waiting, Cloudways will notify you that your server is ready and you have to click on your server, in this case the server is called Technology.
First, you will find this view of your new server.
To add a WordPress blog on your server, you have to click on applications.
And in applications, I recommend that you click on the latest version of WordPress, which is a version optimized for Cloudways. In this case, the latest version is WordPress 5.4.2.
And that’s it. Your WordPress blog is in the cloud, thanks to Cloudways.
Now le’s continue in this post about how to start a WordPress blog.
Enter your blog
Click and you can see where to access your blog.
This is the window that you will see with the information you’ll need to enter your blog.
Linking Cloudways and Namecheap
My recommendation, in this post about how to start a WordPress blog, is that you buy your domain name in Namecheap.
In Namecheap, you will find the domain name that you want.
Now you have to enter domain management to make the link between the domain that you have bought in Namecheap and your new blog.
Upon entering domain management, you will see this screen.
In the primary domain, you must put in the name of the purchased domain. In this case, as an example, I will put in the name I bought from Namecheap.
Before going to Namecheap, you must have this number at your fingertips.
With your public IP number ready, go to the Namecheap dashboard and select the purchased domain. Here, as an example, I will select El Experto Tecnológico.
Click manage and go to advanced DNS. Upon entering, you will find this screen.
Then click on add new record and the final configuration of your domain should look like this.
The first thing you need to do after clicking on add new record is:
Find option: a record
In host, place: @
In value, place your public IP that Cloudways gave you.
TTL: Automatic
After completing these steps, you can enter your domain by placing it in the browser, for example: elexpertotecnologico.com.
But what if people write www.elexpertotecnologico.com? For that, this is the following configuration:
Click on add new record:
Find option: a record
In host, write: www
In value, place your public IP that Cloudways gave you.
TTL: Automatic
And that is how to start a WordPress blog
Done, you already have a blog on Cloudways with your domain configured.
I will be happy if this Cloudways review is useful for you.
You can enter your blog and write your first post with these details:
Looking for the best loading time for your blog
Ok, now you know how to start a WordPress blog. But now it is time to look for the best loading time for your blog.
When you have a new blog on WordPress, you have the default theme.
So let’s test its loading time.
As you can see in this post about how to start a WordPress blog, the loading time is one second. This proves that a cloud hosting service is faster than a shared hosting service.
Installing GeneratePress
But I know that you want a faster loading time in this post about how to start a WordPress blog, so for that reason let’s test the blog with another theme.
I am going to use the free theme of GeneratePress.
If you want to install GeneratePress, you have to follow these steps:
You have to go to Themes, then Add New:
Now in Search Themes, type in GeneratePress.
The last step is to click on Install.
This is how this theme looks.
Now let’s test it.
And the loading time is 0.6 seconds. Less than a second! And that is what you need to rank high on the search engines.
And that is how to start a WordPress blog.
Conclusions about how to start a WordPress blog:
You can learn how to start a WordPress blog by just following this step by step tutorial, but the difficult part is to maintain a regular schedule of posting.
The search engines need a regular schedule of posting because they want fresh content.
Also, I recommend that you have a cloud hosting solution; having fast loading times for your blog from the beginning will help you with search engine optimization.
