When I started my first blog I had no idea what I was doing. I knew nothing about web hosting or purchasing domains and I definitely didn’t know how to create a website so I relied heavily on the advice of other blogs. Starting a blog can be really intimidating if you don’t know what you are doing so I thought I would share with you some of the things that I found useful when creating my blog.

Let’s get started!

Web Hosting/ Domain

For every website/blog you make you will need to buy web hosting services and a domain name. I bought both of those through the web hosting site Bluehost. For 12 months I paid $155 for their plus web hosting services and $12.99 for my domain, however, Bluehost is always having sales on web hosting services especially if you are a first time user so you might be able to get their web hosting services for even cheaper.

Website Creating Services

On top of needing web hosting services and a domain name, you will also need to sign up for a website that will help you make your blog. If you are good with code, you might be able to create your own blog, however, it is ten times easier to use a site like WordPress or Blogger to set up your blog. I use WordPress for no reason other than it was the most recommended when I was researching which website to use and it works great with Bluehost. You might be tempted to sign up for a free blog with WordPress so you don’t have to pay for anything, but I would advise against that. If you are just creating a blog as a hobby, to practice writing, or as your own personal digital diary a free blog is fine, however, if you want to turn your blog into your business it not only looks more professional to pay for a blog where your domain doesn’t include WordPress in it, but you also can’t run ads from places like Google Adsense on your free blog.

Plugins

TinyMCE Advanced

One thing that annoys me about how WordPress interacts with certain templates is they don’t allow you many options to change specific features like font size and type of font. To work around this issue the TinyMCE Advanced plugin will expand the options you have when writing and editing a post. Once you install and activate the plugin you can see the advanced options that the plugin offers by creating a new post and scrolling down to where all of your font and paragraph options are.

Yoast SEO

If you want to increase your rankings on search engines Yoast SEO is the plugin to use. I typically use Yoast SEO to do two things: add a keyword to my posts and to change meta descriptions. It’s important to add keywords to your post so when people search for that specific keyword in Google your post will pop up. When you enter a keyword for a post with Yoast SEO they will tell you if your keyword is good or bad and give you suggestions on how to improve your keyword. On top of being able to add keywords to your post, Yoast also makes it easy for you to change the meta descriptions of the posts and pages on your website. A meta description is the paragraph shown below the title of a post/page when people come across your article or blog in a search engine. The only time I use this is to change the description of my pages. For instance, when you search for kelciemakespatterns.com in WordPress there are a few things I was able to change. Instead of having the title of my website just say Kelcie Makes Patterns, I also added surface pattern design to the title so people would know exactly what my blog is about. I also was able to change the description of my website to read “Surface pattern designer and blogger with an emphasis in Adobe Illustrator tutorials and minimalistic patterns. Licensing and custom orders available.” I wanted people to know that I didn’t just talk about surface pattern designs, but also Adobe Illustrator so I included that in the meta description.

Master Slider

Master Slider is probably my favorite plugin and is what I used to create the slideshow of my patterns on the homepage. For anyone who has a blog that is photo driven, this is a great way to show your pictures.

WordPress Theme

For those of you who wanted to know, I use the free version of Kale as my WordPress theme. Stylistically I like the look of the theme, but like most free WordPress themes, there are not many options for customizing your blog. This theme works perfectly for me now, but in the future, I want a more customizable theme.

Fonts

Something that often gets overlooked when creating a blog is the use of fonts. Let’s say you want to use a decorative font for your graphics and titles. You cannot just go online and find a free font to use on your website because likely it is copyrighted. Most if not all of the fonts I use on my website are from Creative Market. They have giant bundles of fonts on their website so I was able to buy 109 fonts for 19 dollars. The font bundle I bought was the bundle from MediaLab.co.

Photo Sites

One thing you should be aware of when creating a blog is you should never pull a picture off of google images and use it as your own. Since I know my way around Adobe Illustrator, all of the pictures on my website are made by me so I don’t need to use outside photos. For those who don’t have that luxury, there are great websites that have photos you can use for your website. One of my favorite photo sharing websites is Flickr. Many of the photos on Flickr cannot be used for commercial or personal use so you have to check the license for each picture. It also doesn’t hurt to contact the owner of the picture you want and see if it is ok to use that picture on your blog.

For an alternative solution to finding photos for your blog, until the end of February 2018, I am offering to make anyone who asks for it free graphics for their website. You can send me your idea for a blog graphic that you want me to make to my email (kelciemakespatterns@gmail.com) and I will try to make it. I reserve the right to refuse to make any blog graphic you suggest if I cannot make it, it doesn’t align with my beliefs, if you ask for too many blog graphics and I cannot keep up with the demand, etc.

These are a few of the things that keep my blog going each day. Are there any tools you use for your blog that I did not include in this list?

If you liked this post why not share it! It lets me know what posts you like so I can make more posts like this.

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