After creating your brand you’ve chosen the free WordPress.com as your platform but you have no idea what to do next? No worries, I have got your back with a quick overview on how to get using WordPress.com.
Get registered
- Register your account at WordPress
- Create your URL as domainname.wordpress.com (Remember your branding!)
- Choose a plan, at this stage I would recommend a free plan – you can always upgrade later
- Set up Gravatar to include your personal details, your photo/logo (It’s up to you what you choose) and a link to your site.
- Set your blog name under site identity and get started on designing your site to fit your brand.
Designing your blog
WordPress has hundreds of themes to choose from. This will create the layout and the aesthetic of your blog. You can preview how the themes will look before selecting one and you can also customise these to fit your needs even more.
Upload your header that you thought about when branding to make your blog cohesive. You can do this under the customise option.
You can add and move widgets around to allow you to add features such as social sharing buttons. You can also change your fonts and colours to match your colour palette.
Post your content
In the top right corner there’s the Write button to write your first blog post! If you caught my WordPress Org guide earlier in the week, you’ll notice there’s really similar options for WordPress.com. Post settings is where you can post or schedule you blog posts. You can also save your blog posts as drafts and keep them for later.
Categories and tags are really important to try and get your content read. Categories is more for your website’s index and keywords of ‘Beauty’ and ‘Books’ etc. and it’s also good for yourself as you can see how many posts you have in each category. Tags are super important for readers to find your content in WordPress reader. You can search for keywords and posts using that tag will show up. This is one of the best ways for you to find new readers as a new blogger.
Now you’re all set up to continue posting!
Comments
10 responses to “Blogging 101: WordPress.com Guide”
I’ve never used wordpress.com only self-hosted. It’s slightly depressing to see how easy using .com is. Love how helpful this series is! x
Sophie
http://www.glowsteady.co.uk
I don’t know if it’s just because I started on .com but I can actually still use that way to post – but I do prefer having all my extras on so don’t utilise it! x
Great article for beginners. I wish I had known all this when I started out!!
I’m so glad this is useful for people! Thank you!
Great post. I am on blogger because I find it more suited to my needs. But WordPress.com is definitely easier to set up and has some great features.
Would you say my sum up of blogger is still accurate? I haven’t used it for years now!
I always forget which one I’m on 😂 I’m self-hosted so probs .org although I used .com to view my stats.. odd! Anyway, this is a very useful article for new bloggers! x
I’m the same! Sometimes I used .com for my stats overview when I’m too lazy to use google 🙈
Wonderful resource for beginning bloggers. Thanks for providing it!
So glad you liked it! Thank you Nicole😄