How to start a blog

To start a blog, you need a topic you can write about regularly, a name with a matching domain, a platform to publish on and time to write. Once those are in place, you pick a design, write a few posts, publish them and start bringing in readers.

What you need to start a blog

Sort out these four things before you make your own blog. With those in place, you set up the blog in the steps below.

• A topic and a name. Pick a subject you can keep writing about, for yourself or your business, and a short name that says what the blog is about.
• A domain name. Choose a domain name that matches the blog's name. If your readers are mainly in the UK, go for .co.uk, as in yourblog.co.uk.
• A platform. This is the software your blog runs on. You can build a WordPress website on one of our web hosting plans, or use a website builder with a blog built in.
• Time to write. Decide when you'll write before you set anything up.

WordPress or a website builder: which is better for a blog?

For most new blogs, we recommend WordPress. A website builder is the quicker route when the blog sits beside a business site you want online soon.

Our advice: choose WordPress if the blog is the main thing on your site or you plan to publish often. Plugins add the features you need later, so WordPress can grow with your blog. If the blog is one part of a business website, the Aida AI Website Builder is the simpler way to make a blog. The blog is then one of the site's sections, next to your shop or your bookings, depending on your plan.

In the builder, you add the blog as a section by asking Aida in the chat or by adding it yourself. The rest of this guide covers WordPress.

How to create a blog with WordPress

Before you install WordPress, decide where the blog goes. If the blog is an essential part of your website, we advise you to install it on your full domain, such as yourblog.co.uk. A subdomain is a name you add in front of a domain, such as blog.yourshop.co.uk. It keeps the blog apart from a website you already run on that domain.

When you have a hosting plan with a domain, you install WordPress for the blog from your control panel.

1. Make sure you have a hosting plan and a registered domain for the blog.
2. Start a new WordPress installation from your control panel.
3. Choose where the blog goes: your main domain or a subdomain.
4. Create your WP Admin login with a personal username and a strong password.
5. If you build the blog with the help of Aida, our AI tool, give it a name and, if you like, a tagline. Then pick a theme. If you choose to build it yourself, you get an empty WordPress installation instead.
6. Finish the setup. You're then logged in to WP Admin, the dashboard where you manage your blog, and can start customising it.

Our help article on installing WordPress from the control panel shows each step of the setup.

Every one of our hosting plans comes with a one-click WordPress installer, so you can start your blog straight away.

How to make your blog look good

A theme gives your blog its design: the look of every page and post. You can switch to another theme at any time, so the first choice doesn't have to be perfect. The WordPress theme directory has thousands of free themes.

Depending on the theme, you can then change its colours, background and header image. It's worth settling the design before you publish much, because a new theme changes the look of every post at once.

How to write and publish your first post

In WordPress, each article on your blog is a post. You write it in the block editor, where every paragraph, heading, image or list is a block. A post stays a draft until you publish it. While it's a draft, you can save your work, come back to it later and preview how it will look. Publishing makes the post visible to your visitors.

Write a few posts before you tell anyone about the blog, so your first visitors find more than one post to read.

Categories and subcategories

Categories group posts on the same subject and help readers find what interests them. A subcategory is a category with a parent category above it. A travel blog, for example, could have “Holidays” as the parent category, with “Summer holidays” and “Ski holidays” under it. Each post can sit in more than one category, so a ski trip in March can go under both “Ski holidays” and a spring category.

Images and other media

Media means the images, videos, audio and other files you use on your blog. You can upload them while writing a post, and the media library keeps everything you've uploaded, so you can find it again later. If you need pictures, our guide shows where to find images for your website.

Adding other authors

If several people write for your blog, give each of them their own user account in WP Admin. The role you give them decides what they can do:

• Administrator can use every administration feature of the site, including settings and plugins.
• Editor can publish and manage posts, including those of other users.
• Author can write and publish their own posts.
• Contributor can write posts but cannot publish them.

How to get more readers for your blog

A new blog needs readers, so plan how you'll bring them in, and give it time.

• Write posts that answer a question your readers have, in plain language, and give them a reason to come back. When you run out of topics, try our blog post ideas.
• Google says its ranking systems are designed to put helpful, reliable content made for people first, so write for your readers before anything else. Then use search engine optimisation (SEO) to make each post easier to find, starting with a clear title and headings that say what the post covers.
• Use online marketing such as an email newsletter to keep readers up to date with new posts. Social media pages for your blog let readers share your posts with their followers.

Which plugins are useful for a blog?

Plugins add features that WordPress doesn't have on its own. The plugin directory holds thousands of WordPress plugins, and these three are useful for a blog:

• Editorial Calendar shows all your planned posts on one calendar, with the date each one goes live.
• wpDiscuz turns the standard WordPress comments into a more interactive discussion.

Before you install a plugin, check that it works with your version of WordPress. Each plugin's description in the directory says whether it's compatible. If its makers haven't updated it since the latest WordPress release, it may not work with that version. It's worth reading its reviews too. After you install a plugin, activate it so it starts working. Keep it up to date after that, or leave these updates to us with Managed Hosting for WordPress.

How much does it cost to create a blog?

The cost of creating a blog comes down to a hosting plan and a domain, because WordPress itself costs nothing to use. The themes in its official directory are free too. With our hosting, the price depends on how large and complex your website is and on the extra features your plan includes, and it doesn't have to cost more than a few pounds a month. When you bundle a domain with one of our hosting plans, the domain is free for the first year on selected extensions. After that, a domain registration with us runs for a year at a time and renews automatically by default.

If the blog is only a hobby, a free blogging platform can be enough to start. Your blog then sits on the platform's address instead of your own domain. For a blog on your own domain, you need the domain and a hosting plan or website builder to run it.

Once your topic and name are settled, compare our web hosting plans and see what each plan costs today. Then install WordPress and write your first post.