There are two ways to get a WordPress blog. Today we’ll talk about the easiest but perhaps not the best way. Simply go to WordPress and sign up. It is totally free for now and it’s quite easy. Click on the blue box that says, ‘Get a WordPress Blog Now’. The next page will ask you for some information. Create your username and enter your e-mail address. Of course, you have to agree to their terms of service and off you go on the way to your own blog.

Be careful when choosing your user name. It will be in the address of your blog so make it relevent to your blog subject. Since you are not limited to one blog, you can make your first blog a ‘practice’ blog just to see how everything works. My first WordPress blog was my name - cperkins.wordpress.com.

When you click on ‘Give me my blog’, the next screen will take a few moments to appear. Be patient because WordPress is doing behind the scenes stuff to set up your blog.

The next page will have your blog domain at the top. This page is where you give your blog a title, tell WordPress what language you will be using, and if you want your blog publicized. If this is your practice blog, uncheck the privacy block. If you are going for it, leave it checked and WordPress will help you publicize it.

Click the box that says ‘Sign Up’ and a confirmation page will appear telling you that the blog is yours but you must activate it first. You will receive and e-mail at the address you input. You MUST click the link in the e-mail to activate your blog. That e-mail tells you that after you activate it you will get another e-mail with your login information.

When you get the second e-mail you can start blogging! Sign in on the same page you went to in order to get your blog except this time look for the section titled ‘Already hip?’ and input your user name and password.

Next time we will learn how to host your own blog. This is much more professional and feature rich. You must have your own domain and hosting in order to host your own blog so that will cost money but not from WordPress - just your hosting fees.

Until next time, if you need a no cost way to blog, try this. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to get your own blog!

Blogarithm is a cool new alternative to RSS.  This service lets you keep track of all your favorite blogs in one e-mail a day.  This e-mail alerts you to which of the blogs you are tracking have been updated since the last e-mail.  Actually, you can track any web page you want.  All you need is the URL and Blogarithm will check it for you and send an alert in its morning BlogMail if it has changed.

This is a cool alternative to RSS because you don’t need a feed reader and you know exactly which sites have changed since yesterday.

You will see the Blogarithm box just to the left on this page.  Give it a try.  It’s simple to use and a great time-saver.

A side note - thanks to everyone who has responded to the survey.  It’s a great help and I’m just about ready to get started teaching you how to build a blog in WordPress from the ground up.

What you see here, with minor exceptions, is what you will see when you install WordPress. This is the default theme. There will be a post called ‘Hello World’ which you will want to delete and replace with your first post. Look at the bottom here and you will see my first post called ‘New Set-up’.

What you see on the right side of the page, called the ‘Sidebar’, is almost what you will see at first. I added the RSS feed button and categories. BlogRoll and Meta are there as they will appear. Over the next few days, we will talk about how to customize your WordPress blog.

Thanks to those who have taken my survey. I’m getting a good idea of what you want to see here but I need MORE! Please, get your WordPress needs met right here by taking the survey below.