WordPress design is a publishing system that makes starting any blog a piece of cake. All you really need is a hosting account, a domain name, some kind of FTP client software that allows you to upload files directly to a server, and the WordPress app will make the rest easy.

For the sake of discussion, I’ll assume you have a Hostgator account. This is not the only hosting company out there, but it is reliable, very customer service oriented, and inexpensive. Any hosting service that uses a cPanel Linux control panel is fine too. I will also assume that you know how to go to GoDaddy, Namescheap, or any other Internet domain registrar and get a domain name. Once you do that, all you have to do is set up your nameservers and point it to your hosting account. If you need step-by-step guidance on how to do this, call your hosting company and ask them. This is what I did and they are good at guiding anyone through this seemingly daunting but in fact very easy process.

Next, you need to log in to your control panel. Cpanel makes uploading your WordPress application to your server really easy and in a matter of minutes! Go to your control panel and go to the “Fantastico De Luxe” section. Click the “WordPress” button and click “New Installation.” It will ask you for some simple information, such as the title you want your blog to have, and then it will automatically install the platform.

The rest is easy. WordPress makes it very easy to publish any content you want on your blog. And it’s set to “ping” automatically, so within a week Google will probably find it. I’ve found that any new WordPress blog I set up gets indexed within a couple of days, even without a single link pointing to it.

To add a new post, surprise surprise, all you have to do is go to “Posts” and then go to “Add New”. If you need to add an image from another URL or from your computer, it’s extremely easy to do so. Hit the “add image” tab and you can enter an image URL address or upload it to your blog from your desktop. When you’re done with a post, you hit publish and the app automatically creates your permalinks and places your newly published post on your main home page. You can designate how many posts you want on your home page, but most experts recommend no more than three. Any more than that leads to information overload for your readers.

The entire template is easy to use and pretty much self-explanatory. Once you browse your WordPress dashboard for 30 minutes to an hour, I’m sure you’ll have mastered all the basics of running your WordPress blog. It is made to be so easy to handle that an elementary school age child could do it. It was launched in 2003 and has been the catalyst for the blogging explosion of the latter part of this decade. There are millions of people who use it and its extreme ease of use is a big reason. Leverage this publishing system to create the blog of your dreams, and if you create great content, you’ll likely attract hundreds or thousands of visitors who want to read what you have to say every day.