Art of Blog — The Art of How to Start and Run a Blog

How to Get a Good Logo

7 comments December 17, 2009

Your logo is often the first thing that people will see when they visit your website. While it’s possible to just use a text header when starting out, I’d highly recommend getting a really good logo from the beginning (bad logo design can actually cost you). Logos help establish your brand and credibility.

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Blog Design – Where to Get the Best Wordpress Themes

5 comments December 16, 2009

Now that you have your Wordpress blog installed and setup, you want to make your website look good and stand out. In Wordpress that’s done by downloading and installing themes (they’re basically skins or designs for your blog). What you will want to do is download or buy a theme, pop in a new logo, customize some parts of it to make it your own, and install some plugins. Let’s tackle themes first.

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Installing Wordpress and Setting Permalinks

4 comments December 15, 2009

Once you have your hosting covered, go ahead and install Wordpress – it’s the best blogging system out there and every single professional I know uses it. If you are on Dreamhost, Nick does a great job showing you the process of installing it (video #2) via Dreamhost’s One-Click Installation Panel. If you are on VPS.net, ask their customer support to do it for you. If you are hosted elsewhere, just follow the instructions on the Wordpress site.

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Hosting Your Blog – I Recommend Dreamhost or VPS.net

4 comments December 15, 2009

There are hundreds if not thousands of places where you can host your website out there. Over the past 8 years we’ve gone through tons of hosts and some are a lot worse than others. For most people, shared hosting is the way to go, especially when you’re just starting out. It’s cheap (about $7/mo.) and it does the job.

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Your Options for Grabbing a Good Domain Name

1 comment December 15, 2009

Picking out (or buying) a good domain name for your website can take a lot of time & creativity (or money). There are 3 basic ways to get a good domain name. Alternatively you can buy a an existing website at a place like Sitepoint, but I would avoid this option unless you really know what you’re doing and are an expert at valuing sites.

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