I made a video to quickly (in 10 mins) set up your own blog. Below are steps with links to what you need.
Here is what you need:
- find a theme you like an download it "“ here are some resources:
- Find a place to host it "“ I use dreamhost and recommend it to all my clients. Why? Its dirt simple and getting better all the time. My previous nickel-and-dimed me for every little improvement. Sign-up here and use this coupon for $90 off (You save $90 and I save $7 on my own hosting when you use it :) Code = BENSHOEMATE
- Create or transfer a domain and get all your user names and passwords "“ your going to have at least 3 passwords: Dreamhost, FTP, and wordpress when your done.
- While your waiting for dreamhost to do its thing, install firefox and the extensions fireftp and scribefire.
- Ok, so you get your email from dreamhost, you login to the admin panel, then go to the goodies > one-click-installs. Select wordpress, your domain, enter a name for a new database (just call it wordpressDB it doesn't matter), keep the defaults and install.
- go to your domain (in my case that's benshoemate.com) and refresh "“ in a few minutes you'll see a prompt to install. follow the instructions.
- Dreamhost gives you about 10 themes to play with by default but you will want to find and upload your own. Connect with fireftp (dreamhost sent you an email with ftp info) then and upload the theme you found earlier to the wp-content > themes folder. Make sure you extract it (i.e. don't upload the zip)
- Go look at it in wordpress. Wordpress creates a theme thumbnail "“ nice huh. click and apply.