Installing WordPress on inMotion Hosting
A few years ago, I installed WordPress on a Linode VPS and had it hosted by inMotion Hosting. I figured I’d write up the steps so that others could benefit from my mistakes. Let’s dive in.
Step 1: Pick A Blog Name
As you may have guessed, the first step is to choose a blog name. You could use your email address if you don’t have a domain name, or you could use a subdomain of your personal site. For example, if your personal site is george.jr.com, then your blog could be called georgejr.com (georgejr is a combination of your name and the name of your personal site).
Don’t worry too much about picking a perfect name. A perfect name is incredibly hard to find, and it’s one of the things that makes up for the tediousness of setting up a blog. You’ll get 99 problems, but your blog name is not one of them. As long as you don’t mind fixing typos when you post, then Goofy, Stupid, or Dummy aren’t bad choices.
Step 2: Sign Up For A Free Blogger Account
In addition to picking a blog name, you must sign up for a free blogger account. While you can use your own domain name for your blog, you should use the free blogger account so that you can easily set up redirects from your existing domain to your new blog. To get started, visit this Google page and click on the “Create new blog” button near the top right corner. You’ll be taken to the WordPress dashboard, where you can click on the “Get Started” link. From here, you can either choose to create a new blog from scratch or you can add an existing domain to the dashboard.
Step 3: Install WordPress On Your VPS
Once you have a free blogger account, you can install WordPress on your VPS. To do this, visit the WordPress dashboard and click on the “Install” button in the top right corner. In the next window, you will be asked to enter the admin username and password for your new WordPress blog. After you enter this information, click on the “Install WordPress” button. This will start the process of installing WordPress on your VPS. Once it’s installed, you can return here and click on the “Activate” link to make your blog live.
One of the first things that you should do after installing WordPress is to install a security plugin. I use and recommend the Sucuri Firewall plugin. It’s free, and it’s extremely easy to configure. After you install it, click on the “Sucuri Login” button to connect your WordPress dashboard to your new SSL certificate.
Step 4: Create Your WordPress Blog
Once you have WordPress installed on your VPS and have connected your dashboard to your SSL certificate, you can begin creating your blog. To create a new post, navigate to the “Posts” page of your WordPress dashboard and click on the “Add new” button. A pop-up window will appear where you can enter the title of your post and its content. When you’re finished, click on the Submit button to post your content.
One of the best things about WordPress is its built-in blogging feature. If you get tired of constantly having to create new posts to keep up with your blog, then you can use this feature to easily create new posts from your dashboard. On the “Posts” page, you’ll see a blue box near the top that says, “New Post.” Click inside this box to create new post categories and tags. Use the blog’s built-in posts to get started. If you run out of ideas for blog topics, use this feature to quickly create an idea board. You can also use it to keep track of your blog’s most popular posts.
Step 5: Customize Your Blog’s Theme
One of the things that make WordPress so flexible is the fact that its themes are completely customizable. This means that you don’t have to settle for the stock themes that come with WordPress. Instead, you can browse the WordPress repository of themes and find one that suits your fancy. You can make countless changes to a theme’s look and feel by simply editing its content.
The best way to demonstrate how easy this is to do is by showing you the steps to change the look and feel of a default WordPress theme. To begin, visit this Google page and click on the “Get My Theme” button. Once you download the theme archive, you can install it on your WordPress dashboard by clicking on the “Install” button in the theme’s folder. Once it’s installed, you can begin customizing it by clicking on the theme’s name in the Dashboard’s left sidebar.
Now, let’s say that you want to change the color scheme of your WordPress theme. Click on the Appearance tab on the left side of the Dashboard to access the theme’s settings. You can change the theme’s color scheme by clicking on the “Colors” option at the top of the Appearance page. To choose a new color, simply click on the color square next to Color Scheme (this will make the color pop-up menu appear). You can change the hex code for the new color by clicking on the color square next to #Color and typing in the new code in the text box that appears. For example, if you want to go with a green color scheme and you want to change the text color to yellow, simply type “#FFFF00” into the #Color field and click on the “Save Changes” button.
If you want to make some simple changes to how your blog looks, like changing the header image or adding some social media buttons, there are a few more steps you need to follow. Navigate to the “Header” tab along the top of the Appearance page and scroll down to where it says, “Media Header.” Click inside the black box and select a media header from the pop-up menu. If you run out of options, click on the “Choose from Gallery” button to open up a new image gallery.
Step 6: Set Up Your Blog’s Social Media Accounts
WordPress allows you to connect your blog to various social media accounts (such as Twitter, Google+, and Facebook). To do this, navigate to the “Social” tab along the top of the Dashboard and click on the “Add new” button. A pop-up window will appear where you can enter the account’s username and password for your blog’s Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ accounts. After you enter this information, click on the “Save Changes” button to connect your blog to social media.
You can also click on the “Save Changes” button to make additional changes to your blog’s theme, header image, and colors without having to log in again. This way, you don’t have to keep re-entering your login information when you switch back to the dashboard.
Step 7: Install Google Analytics To Track Website Traffic
You can use Google Analytics to track the traffic on your website. With this free tool, you can see how many visitors come to your blog and where they are from. To install Google Analytics, navigate to the “Analytics” tab along the top of the Dashboard and click on the “Integrate” button. This will open up a new tab in your browser where you can enter the website address for your blog.
Instead of using your own domain for your blog’s URL, you can use the WordPress dashboard to create a temporary URL that will be used by Google Analytics. To create such a URL, navigate to the “General” tab along the top of the Dashboard and click on the “Settings” button. In the resulting window, you can enter a friendly name for your blog (such as “Geoff’s Blog”) and choose a keyword for your blog’s contents. Once you’ve entered these details, click on the “Save Changes” button to confirm. Now when you go to your blog’s URL (which you can find next to the “Status” button in the WordPress dashboard), you will be taken to the Google Analytics dashboard.