Last updated on September 11th, 2023 at 06:57 am
In this article, we have written about everything we know about starting a blog with WordPress. We have written with the objective that at the end of this article, you should be able to go about setting up your own personal or business blog using WordPress without stress. With that being said, let’s dive into how to start a blog in Nigeria with WordPress hosting.
What is a blog?
If you are here, you most likely already know what a blog is. Anyways, a blog, a short form of the word, “weblogs”, is a type of website that is usually run by an individual or a small group of people to present information in a conversational style. Businesses also use blogs to present information about their products and businesses.
Blogs evolved from online journals used by internet hobbyists in the 90s to avenues for social and political commentary to become a mainstream item used by individuals and businesses today.
There isn’t much difference between a blog and a website as every blog is first a website. However, there are certain elements of a blog site that typical websites do not have. For example, while most websites are static, a blog site is always updating as new content is being added.
Two platforms were instrumental in making blogging mainstream: Blogger and WordPress. While both were launched in 2013, Blogger came first and was later acquired by Google. Blogger had a lot of initial success, however as time went on, WordPress became the favorite of bloggers around the world. Today, WordPress hosts about 35% of the world’s internet amounting to at least 455,000,000 websites.
What has made WordPress the first choice of bloggers and website owners?
Why WordPress?
Today, WordPress powers a huge chunk of the internet. WordPress users produce about 70 million new posts and 77 million new comments every single month. What’s more interesting is that, according to WordPress itself, the platform’s growth is showing no signs of slowing down. What has made WordPress such a success?
First is WordPress’ blog centric approach and outlook. Right from its humble beginnings, WordPress has been focused on blogging. Every other part of a website came later. This is because it was the aim of WordPress’s founders, Mike Little and Mike Mullenweg were to democratize blogging at a time when it was only popular among hobbyists. To achieve their goal, they optimized the platform to be very easy to use and of course, this caught on.
WordPress is also very beginner-friendly. Also, using WordPress gives you access to loads of layouts/themes as well as very useful plugins to choose from. WordPress websites and blogs are also mobile & tablet friendly which gives visitors a good experience. To cap it all, WordPress has been able to build a huge support community of developers, bloggers, website managers, and others who can help out new users at all times.
Now that we have learned why WordPress is the most popular website content management system, it’s time to learn how to use it in setting up your blog.
How To Start Your Blog in Nigeria With WordPress Hosting
To use WordPress to set up your blog successfully, there are a couple of steps to take. We will go through each of them and how best to go about them. There are six steps to take to set up your blog successfully:
1. Get A Domain Name and Web hosting
A domain name is basically the name your website is called. For example, the domain name for this website is https://truehost.com.ng. Choosing a domain name is not a small task as it forms a major part of your website’s brand. We have written an article on how to choose a domain name here. Once you have chosen a domain name, it is time to check for availability and choose a domain registrar to handle your domain registration.
After that, you will need a web host, a web host is a company that offers businesses and bloggers like you a space on their servers so anyone anywhere can access your blog through the internet. There are a lot of web hosts in Nigeria today and we have written this to help you chose the best web host for your blog.
Truehost offers you one month of free hosting when you buy a domain name. Get yours here.
2. Install WordPress
Once you have registered your domain name and have bought a web hosting plan, then it’s time to set up WordPress on your hosting. Most hosting plans offer a one-click WordPress installer that makes things super easy. You just have to access your Truehost(or any other web host’s) control, from there you can go ahead to set it up real quick.
3. Install Themes and Customize with Widgets and Plugins
Once you have installed WordPress on your site, you will be able to access your WordPress dashboard. It is from your WordPress dashboard that you will do everything regards setting up your blog.
Like we said earlier, WordPress has a lot of templates, plugins, and widgets that will help you set up a functional website. WordPress offers some free templates and plugins. However, to achieve the most for your website or blog, you will need to purchase new ones. Whatever you need to do can be done from the WordPress dashboard.
4. Create Your First Blogpost
After setting up your website to look exactly as you want, you can go on to create your first post. WordPress is very easy to use, even for a beginner. If you have installed a plugin like Yoast or Jetpack, they will assist you in writing search engine optimized articles.
Asides from posts, you will need to write content for your website home page and other pages.
Can you get a Free WordPress Website?
Yes, if you cannot afford a domain name and host yet, WordPress affords you the opportunity to start a blog for free forever. This provision is one of the main things that helped in increasing WordPress’ popularity.
However, as with most free offers, the free WordPress plan gives you only a tiny piece of what WordPress has to offer. First, since you do not have a domain name, WordPress assigns you a dot-WordPress-dot-com site e.g yourblog.wordpress.com. This sort of website doesn’t appear professional to users and they will easily forget your site.
They also do not give you the runway to design that website as you wish because everything in the free plan is limited. As a result, a free WordPress website is only good as a starter before you get your full WordPress website or blog.
Get Started With Setting Up Your Blog Now
We trust that by now, you have learned how to start a blog in Nigeria with WordPress hosting. Have you started planning on going about the process? We might have something to help you further here.
As we have stated earlier, the first step to setting up your WordPress blog is getting a domain name and web hosting, it is time to get yours. However, you have to make sure you get them at the right places to make sure your website is not only running well but also at all times.
Truehost Nigeria offers the cheapest and most reliable hosting and domain names in Nigeria. We are renowned for our excellent products and customer service.
