Refer to your email from HostGator for your access code and your cPanel link; it will look like ‘yourdomain.com/cpanel’. Get logged in. You’ll see a page of icons and lists of stuff. Go way down to the bottom of the icons and find the smiley face that reads ‘Fantastico De Luxe’ and give it a click.

On the Fantastico page look in the list for ‘Wordpress” and give it a click, this will bring up a Wordpress page. In the Wordpress block, look for ‘New Installation’ and click it.

On this page you will be setting up location and access information for your Wordpress installation. In location you decide to set up on your main domain or create on a sub-directory like /blog, for our purposes leave it to install on domain.

Decide on and jot down your admin access data. This is for logging in to Wordpress, not cPanel although the can be the same. In the Base configuration choose a nice Admin nickname and use your real or main email address here. Next, the site name can be whatever you like, doesn’t have to be anything, use your exact business name if you like.

E-mail account configuration, note the http address and the note for Blog by mail and then choose your first username and a password. Click on the ‘Install Wordpress’ block. This will bring up some confirming information, click the ‘Finish Installation’ block. Finally that will get you to the last thing and that will be to enter an email address to send details too. Fill it in, click the ’send’ block and you’re done.

Log out of cPanel and go to your http address like your_domain.com and see what you built. Next post we’ll login, don’t wait for me by the way, and build up your blog.

You can view the package details. The Hatchling account is an excellent account if you only intend to have a single domain. The only negative is you have to pay up for a year. The baby is next and offers monthly pay and unlimited domains with plenty of space for multiple blogs. This one will work for most. The next ones over are excellent as well.

What you really want is Fantastico in your control panel, 100G disk space and 1,000G bandwidth. Their control panel is cPanel and is as easy as it gets to use, here’s a free manual http://www.cpanel.net/docs/cpanel/. The packages come with plenty of email and auto-responder services so you’ll pretty much be all set.

Next check your email for your HostGator order and jot down the nameserver addresses, there will be two, something like ns???.websitewelcome.com and ns???.websitewelcome.com.

Just a little more work to do here. Bounce back to your GoDaddy account and login. Mouse over ‘Domains’ and slide down to ‘My Domain Names’ and click, then click on your domain name. This will bring up the ‘Domain Control Center’. In the middle of the page Look for ‘Nameservers’, click on one of them, they will start with ns? most likely.

On the page that comes up replace Nameserver 1 & 2 with your HostGator nameserver address’s and click ‘OK’. Log out of GoDaddy, your done. Your domain is about to go live we just have to put something on it. In the next post we’ll set up Wordpress as your blogging service on your domain.

When you can’t get the exact name then try to find as relative a name as possible. Try putting dashes between your words if your choice is taken. Add something like ‘a’ or ‘the’ or change ’shop’ to ’store’ or even leave a part out, just keep it relative.

Another tip is that if your name is easy to misspell, buy the most common misspelled names and have them redirected to your main site. This is done at the GoDaddy site and I cover that in a later post.

Finally head over to dncoupons.com and copy the the discount code for Godaddy.com and paste it a notepad file to save it for later. During the registration process over at Godaddy.com be sure to use the code. This process will save you some change whenever you get new domains.

I also suggest you register your domain for 1 year and manually renew it. Take no other options for now as you’ll learn more as you go along and this way if you change your name later it won’t be as much of a hassle.

First, a free blog doesn’t belong to you, you just write it. The blog belongs to the provider and as such it stays up at their discretion. They have a funny way of disappearing sometimes and you may never know why.

You can’t use your own domain name. You can use whatever name that’s available with the addition of the blog name. Like yourdomain .blogprovider .com, kind of cheesy for a business address.

Next you need to know that you can’t do whatever you want with them. You may or may not be able to add links and services of your choice. Your also restricted in how you may modify the templates. Access to styles and colors are usually quite limited.

Lastly, on a free blog a competitor or a customer may make a complaint or an unfavorable comment and as a result your site may be shut down or you may not be able to edit out or remove the comment. Again your control may be quite limited.

All of these things can be avoided when you own your domain name and have it privately hosted. For instance, I bought the name for this domain at GoDaddy.com and have it hosted at HostGator.com. The fact is I have many blog sites for several business’s like this and have had no problems whatever and have total control. I use Wordpress templates for free and their are a huge amount of additional templates and plug-ins you can get at no or low cost at several locations on the net.

Over the next few weeks I’ be posting many useful tips and techniques for using and modifying templates as well as using plug-ins. So stay tuned.

The way to do this easily is set up an automatic email; an auto-responder. The auto-responder will send a “Thank You” message when the address information is entered. There’s one up in the ‘Contact Us’ box up near the top of this page set up just for that. In this case when someone puts in their address information they will immediately get a ‘Thank You’ email which will have a contact phone for me in it. (In case they need help building a site like this.)

This saves me from spammers a bit as usually they choose to remain unknown. We all what to keep off unwanted mailing lists when possible. This is part of the reason you usually can’t find phone numbers on websites.

So what if you could write a sequence of emails and have them sent out on intervals to your customers? Or broadcast a special message like “Sale This Saturday” whenever you wanted? Or offer specials as you found them? Neat stuff. All of a sudden you and your customer are communicating more frequently and things like familiarity and friendship start up. You just may turn out to be the only place they think when they buy what you sell.

I use a service called Aweber Communications for all these services and it just doesn’t get any easier than that. Online or offline these guys help me put more value in my business by helping me maintain friendly contact with my customers.

By the way, if your not collecting an email address from each of your customers or clients you may be missing out on some easy follow up business. Not to mention a great way to keep your business fresh in mind for your customers.

Getting that email address and entering it into an auto-responder to build a list is easy and offers a great way to keep track of your customers and clients. Keeping in touch with your customers reminds them of you and let’s them know their business is valuable.

A blog can be an dynamic and fluid way to keep your business fresh to the world. Online you can put up a blog about your new offerings, special deals or more information about the niche that you service and offer your clients extra value for doing business with you.

Referrals to your site from happy customers can grow your business, they just need to enter an email address and contact is all set up. With the simple addition of a contact box a blog  can offer a way for that ‘person to person’ contact to become new business.