So Neely, I've always wanted to know with building your first blog
You really have to figure out what do you actually want to write about? So, my greatest passion is food
eating it. Yeah, eating it, talking about it, seeing it, whatever, right on
So that's a good, that's a good thing to blog about. There are tons of food bloggers out there
Hopefully you'll get some free food out of it and that's what I'm hoping for. Um But once you figure that out
you got to really figure out who your audience is. Who do you want to serve? So is there a type of food that you
like to blog about? I would say probably just the new up and coming restaurants in the area
So your, your audience is more the the trendier people, the foodies
the millennials, the millennials like us. So that's super important to figure out what your
your actual blog is going to be about and who your audience is because you have to be targeted with your message
If you try to serve everyone, you actually end up serving no one. It's like trying to boil the ocean
You just can't do it. All right. The next thing to really think about is understanding why you actually want to start this blog because
there's a lot of work involved. So, Alex, why do you want to start this blog
Well, I just love to write. So it's a great outlet for some creativity
And also just to, you know, try, try new food options. I dig it, I dig it
So now that you have those questions answered, the next part of really starting your blog is figuring out what the name of it is
going to be and the branding. Now, do you have an idea of what your name is going to be
Because I have an idea, what do you think I should name my blog? So I already checked and the domain name is Alex Eats
food.com is available. So the blog, Alex eats Food, right? So I think
I think that's what we're going to make today. So with that name
uh if you're struggling on trying to figure out what your own name is, we got a video up here on naming
that'll definitely help you out. But to carry on with that, the next portion of it comes branding your brain is literally every single aspect
of your blog. That's the, the way you talk on it. That's the images you use the text
the font, literally everything. So you want to try to keep that consistent
the more consistent you are with your branding, the more people are easily able to recognize you
right? Like if you see like go daddy's color, the green and orange, you instantly think God daddy or like the red and yellow
What colors do you think of mcdonald's mcdonald's, right. So, keep Alex
look at that. All right. So the last thing you need to ask yourself before you actually start going into building the website is figure
out, do you want just a blog or do you want a full on website with a blog included
So, Alex, which one do you want? I think I want to keep it simple. Just do the blog for now
So that way I can still focus on all the food you need, right? Like that's super important
All right. So we're gonna go ahead and show you guys a quick demo. Let's go check it out. All right
Alex. So we're about to make your blog here. I'm gonna take you through actually installing wordpress on a hosting account
There's a difference between wordpress.com hosting and self hosted wordpress. Now, for most business owners
I would definitely recommend a self hosted wordpress. This is basically you going to a hosting provider
buying hosting and installing wordpress on top of it. Sounds like a lot of work
but it's actually pretty easy to do. So check it out. So inside ac panel
most providers have it, you're gonna look for a thing called Install Aron
There's lots of apps to choose from you. Click wordpress, install this application
then it's gonna give you a lot of different options. We have our domain name here. Alex eats food.com directly
The blanks you don't want to like slash something. You just wanted the domain
Uh, you have the user name and password here, your email, you can update that as you need to and then you click install at
the bottom. Ok. Easy enough. All right. So you've never built a Wordpress site before
right? So, brand new. So the cool thing about wordpress is that you can access it literally anywhere you want to
So where's kind of your kind of favorite places to work? I like to write on my blog whenever I'm
you know, at home, at home, chilling out. Uh I like coffee shops and just working there so I can access it there
which is cool. So you go to your domain name and then forward slash WP dash admin
There'll be a login screen. I'm cheating and doing like a one click log in here inside ac panel
So now there's a get started wizard. We're gonna skip past that just because you may not have that get starting wizard with your hosting
provider. So we'll hit. No, thanks. So this is wordpress. It can seem overwhelming
There's lots of stuff here to choose from. But I think the very first thing that we need to do is choose a theme for
your site. So a theme is basically like how you want your site to look
feel and function. Are there different things that I can choose from
Uh There are a ton. So you go to appearance and themes, you have some default ones here
I would recommend installing your own. We're gonna have you kind of choose your own
We're gonna go to the most popular here and we'll just tell me when I'll let you pick whatever one you want
I like this one. All right. So we're, we're going to Sydney
Let's do it. So you mouse over it, click install. So then once it's installed
you click activate and then you just install a theme. Super simple
All right. So after themes, we want to kind of check out some plugins. So plugins are basically little add ons to your website
So you can literally do almost anything with a plug in. There's that old phrase
there's a plug in for that. We actually made a video on our favorite plugins if you want to check it out
Uh But I'll show you how to install a plug in. It's pretty much the same as installing a theme
So, plugins add new and then it's gonna show you some of the featured plugins here
Um Then we're gonna go to popular and I'll let you kind of check it out. Um So let's check out
Uh We definitely want people to find your website. So we'll install Yost seo here and just like that
we're gonna click install. So once you do install again, same thing
activate and then that plugins done. All right. So that's installing a plug in
Super simple. But let's get to the real meat of making your blog and that's the post
So what do you want to make a post right now? Yeah, let's do it. Cool. So where is the place that you recently ate
at or maybe your favorite place in Austin? Let's go with H Dotty great burgers
So super simple mouse over post and go add new and then you're gonna go to the editor and this is going to be where
you can basically start writing all your content. So how do you spell hop dotty
Is it Hopop Hit Daddy? I can't type Hop dod Dy. Cool H Dotty
Exactly as it sounds. So you put your title here, you can add all your content
Look at all this great content. I'm writing. I'm just the best here
All the words guys, my blog is gonna be a lot better than Super hot fire
All right. And then, so this is uh what was called the Gutenberg editor
Now, it's just really called the page editor. You can add all your stuff here
So as you see, I just started typing, there's this little plus guy right here and you can add even more content
So maybe you wanna start adding pictures of your restaurant or the restaurants you eat at rather or the food you eat you could do
So here just add your image and then you can choose from the media library
I don't have anything in the media library. So no hop dotty pictures
So I'm gonna grab just a picture of a burger just for example sake
Uh I'm gonna go to peels.com and just type in burgers. See what pops up and these are all free images
right? Yes. These are all free images makes it super helpful, especially if maybe you're not doing food reviews where you have to have the
image maybe to some cool stock photos. These all look delicious and I'm hungry
All right. So I'm gonna download this really quick. Cool. What's cool about uh pixels too
Is these photographers are giving their photos for free. If you want to support them
you can donate or follow on Instagram, which is pretty cool. Little kick back there
And then once you have your image, you're gonna upload it there and then add your alt text
So alt text is basically what Google can read because Google can't understand what an actual image is
So you have to tell it. So super awesome burgers and then select and then we have our post
and then as you see here, we install Yost Seo. So there's a little section to update your search engine
title, search and descriptions and all that good stuff. And now last but not least the one of the more important things to think about
with your post is to have a featured image basically. So when you have your your your site
right? It's not just text, you have that little little image there to capture it. Make sure you're on the document tab
Go down to featured image set, featured image and I'm gonna be lazy and just choose the same image burgers all over the burgers
burgers, burgers. And then when you're done, you can publish or if you say you
you've created a bunch of content, you don't want them all published at once. You can actually schedule it right here
So when do you want this to publish? Say on Friday, Friday
All right. So let's check it out. All right. So obviously title
we're gonna have to update a little bit, but then here's, here's your
your blog post. So the feature image always shows first and then your content and then your feature image
you have comment boxes so your visitors can go and add their own two cents or say that is a super awesome burger
I'm super hungry now. Um But let's check out a couple of other places on wordpress
All right. So I'm gonna show you guys widgets and what exactly do widgets do
Widgets are wordpress's best friend. So, on your blog post, you saw that there was that sidebar with not a lot of real content
which is kind of default generic stuff. So if you go to appearances and then widgets is this basically all this content that you're gonna
have on your sidebar and on your footer, some themes may give you more options for sidebars
especially if you have woocommerce, you could have a sidebar just for your blog post
You don't want your blog post just to have like products, you wanna have posts, but you want your products to show other related products
things like that. Got it. So you can easily just get rid of stuff you don't want by clicking and dragging and then something else
to, to really check out is the, the customized tab. Most themes
especially the free themes will have all the options to really design and style your site right there
I'm gonna give you a quick overview of what this looks like. So this city theme has a ton of options and so I was
actually a little surprised um you can have all your stuff here
So your site title, your header area, things like that, your home page settings
Uh So this is super important. So you're gonna have your latest post show up
So let's go ahead and go back. All right. So let's check out your website
So again, just click the my blog that little shortcut to get to your website
Nice. So why does it say create your menu here in the top right corner
Um Because we need to create a new menu here. So that menu is gonna be your navigation
It's all like your home links your about contact all that good stuff. Uh You can either click it there if you're on the fur
of or if you're in the dashboard, it's appearance and then menus
you can add your stuff here. So it looks like we have a menu already kind of created
We have home and then sample page. I don't want sample page to show up
So I'm going to go ahead and just remove that and then go ahead and click create menu
Then once you do, you'll see at the bottom here. It shows menu settings so you can auto add pages
So you as you add like an about a contact things, it'll automatically come here
So you don't have to and then display location, primary menu. So it will actually appear up there
So if you go primary menu and save and now check out the site
it'll show home just like that. Then we have your awesome H dotty post with all this randomness and then hello world right there
the default default post there. So what does it mean when it says Uncas right there
I almost forgot. So every post has a category. So you could have like burger restaurants
you can have ice cream places, whatever you want it to be
So by default, wordpress doesn't know what to put. So it's gonna have an unc uh category
So you go to post categories and then just click quick edit
We're gonna just type in burgers here, make it nice and simple. But as you add posts
you can add content here for categories or inside the post itself
So now one of the issues with having a blog is potentially the amount of spam you might get
There are bots out there that just go out and just basically add just nonsense posts trying to get links back to their site
So how do I avoid that? So there's a few things you can do. So most of the time wordpress will come pre installed with
the plug in called Akismet anti spam. You can sign up and do that otherwise you can do like a capa plug in that makes
sure that they actual person on your website and commenting uh plugins like discus
which is like Facebook login or, or Twitter login is definitely good to help prevent some of that stuff too
So earlier you showed me that seo plug in, you know, how do I make sure that my content is going to be seen
Yeah. Uh Let's actually check out Yost. So if you go over to your page
we want to go back to edit it again. So you can either click directly on it or click edit here
So under yo, it's going to give you a lot of recommendations and things like that
Like again, I have nonsense here. Just for the sake of this, that you're the writer
I'm gonna let you create here. I work the magic later, but it'll take a little snippet here for you
So by default, it's gonna have title page Separator and site title. So you can get rid of this and do Hop dotty
my favorite burger place review or whatever you want it to be
It's going to give you a little kind of wheel, the more content, the better you see goes to green
green is good uh basic and then it's gonna give you like a little snippet of how it's gonna look on search engines
You want a lot of content that's attention grabbing and has kind of your
your focus keyword. So your focus keyword really be like Hot dotty review
You wanna make sure you have that in there and then your meta description like it says
please provide a meta description by adding a snippet below. Basically, it's a quick little snippet of what someone's going to get out of your
content. If they read it, you want to keep it engaging. But again, make sure you have whatever your focus word is for you to
be hopped out of your view. So have that somewhere in there as a business owner
your page, your post, you'll you'll want to make sure that you have some type of focus word for that page
whether it's a review or a balance or a service and include it in your
your description and your title and then you can kind of go down there's an seo ysis
it's gonna give you a lot of information and you can literally just go down the rabbit hole of just clicking all this stuff
Uh I'll leave that for another video. Actually, we did a video on seo if you want to check it out right here
Whoa So why does it say not secure there in the top left corner
Technically, it's not secure. So really, I mean, it's secure, like the information on there is fine
But with wordpress, you have that WP dash admin where you log in, right
So it's not secure. So if you enter in your user name, password
that information is sent over plain text on the internet. So if there's a man in the middle of text
someone what's called sniffing, captures that information, it's out there. It's rough
Super important if you have like a type of shop, are you taking credit card information or is personal information
So that can be easily fixed by getting an SSL certificate. So if you do enter user and password
it's sent over the internet, it's all jumbled up. So even if someone grabs it, they have no idea what the heck it means
Um And then on top of just really just safety and security
you always want to make backups, especially with a blog and you're constantly adding stuff you to post how many times a week or how
many times a month I'm planning on posting probably about once a week
Ok. So that's like 52 posts a year. So if something were to happen to your site
all those posts are gone. So make sure you have some type of backup service
most hosting providers will have something for you or you can find something third party
but it's always easier to do it with your hosting provider since it's all usually automated
Uh But you want to protect all this time invested into this project
make sure it's just not gone in the blink of an eye. All right. So these are just the basics of building your first blog
Again, there's lots of options to kind of go through and make it your own. Like we still need to update the title and then
it comes with the navigation colors, things like that. At least this has a solid foundation for you to build your first site
And then from here it's just exploring. That's kind of the fun of wordpress. There's so much to explore so you can never stop learning
Perfect. Well, thanks for all the help