New Blog Help

Hopefully now that you’ve made the decision to start your own self hosted blog you’ve registered a domain name, bought your blog’s hosting, and changed your name servers so that your domain name points to your hosting account. If all of the above went smoothly then your site should be visible when you type it in the address bar even if it is just a hosting company placeholder page. Now it’s time to get your blogging software into your web space so that you can get to the serious business of blogging everything and anything that is on your mind.

In this post I will show you how to use Fantastico scripts to install your blogging platform and in a separate post I will also show you how to manually install your blogging platform without using scripts as it’s worth knowing how to do it that way too.

The benefits of using Fantastico scripts to install your blog are that it’s fast and simple enough to have your blog online and ready for you in less than five minutes. So if you’re ready, let’s get started!

Step 1 – Consult the Welcome Email Your Hosting Company Sent You

When you signed up for your blog hosting account you would have received a welcome email that contained details about your cPanel and how to access it. It will have a URL in it that looks something like:

This area of your hosting account is username and password protected so make sure you’ve located that information in your welcome email and enter it when you access your cPanel.

Step 2 – Accessing the Fantastico scripts

Once you’ve gotten to the cPanel interface you will see a lot of information and it can be a bit confusing and overwhelming. The information on the left side of the screen is a running log of your account activity like how much web space and bandwidth you’ve used. The right side of the screen is what we’re interested in and it is separated into rows and by category with names like Preferences, Mail, Files, Logs, Security, Domains, Databases, Software, and Advanced. While each section has its use which we will cover at a later time, for the purposes of this post we want to set up your blogging platform so scroll down to the section marked “Software” and you will see a blue happy face and that is your Fantastico scripts section so go ahead and click on it.

Step 3 – Choose Your Blogging Platform in Fantastico Scripts

Congratulations! You’re ready to pick your blogging platform from one of the many scripts available to you by your blog host.  There will be many options to choose from such as content management platforms and ecommerce, but this tutorial covers setting up Wordpress only. Once you’ve installed Wordpress you will have learned how to use the scripts in this section and you can experiment with the other choices available if you like. Locate Wordpress from the list of scripts in the section marked “Blogs” and click on it.

Step 4 – Setting Up Wordpress In Fantastico Scripts

Once you’ve clicked on Wordpress you will see a short description, the support forum and a link marked New Installation so click on it. The next screen is the first of three steps in your Wordpress installation.

You will now be able to view your Wordpress blog by typing in your domain name in the address bar and to log into your Wordpress administration dashboard you must add wp-admin to your domain name like this:

That’s it…you’re done! Now you can start blogging it up! Good luck!

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