Savvy Business Owners Guide to Setting up a WordPress Blog

If you are starting a new blog with it's own unique domain name, here are the steps you need to take. All cooresponding links can be found below in the "Links to Get Your WordPress Blog Started section."

1.Choose hosting account (Bluehost recommended).
2 Choose and set up domain name through Bluehost.
3. Install WordPress through Bluehost one click install. OR
4. If using another host use the famous 5 Minute install.
5. Choose WordPress theme design for your site.
6. Upload theme to the content, themes folder.
7. Activate new theme in the WordPress administration panel under presentation.
8. Choose plugin's, upload to content plugin's folder.
9. Add widgets.

First of all, you must ensure that the host of your existing website provides the right environment for WordPress to run properly.

Here are the current WordPress server requirements for Version 2.5 (to be released in March 08):

* PHP version 4.3 or greater
* MySQL version 4.0 or greater
* (Optional) Apache mod_rewrite module (for clean URIs known as Permalinks)

To find out if your host meets these requirments simply copy and paste the above three bullet points into a new email to your host asking if they provide this environment.

If they don't it may be difficult to get the blog up and running, and if you do, you will most likly run into problems down the road. So at this point the best option is to either transfer your site to a new host or, host your blog at the new host and link it to your site. If you choose a new host just for the blog then refer to the steps above "How To Get Your WordPress Blog Going (self hosted, with a unique domain name".

Setting up a blog onto your existing site:

Choose a name for the folder your blog will be installed into i.e., www.yoursite.com/blog. The /blog can be named whatever you wish.

STEP 1: Log into your FTP client and create a new folder in the root directory.
STEP 2: Follow the same installation procedures as above.
STEP 3: Go to the administration panel, options, general options and ensure that you configure both your WordPress address and Blog address. Follow the directions supplied by WordPress - link found below in links list.