1. Think, think, and think

This is the first step that most of people should practice before doing anything. It took me quite long to define what should be in my blog. There were so many areas that I was interested in by the time I had an idea of building my own blog. What should I pick? Pick all of them? No, if I chose all of them, my blog would look like another CNN later on. I, therefore, should pick the areas that I was most interested in, and could stay with them in long-term. That would create a unique image for my blog later on. And BNguyen dot NET was born with its own image in the IT area.

2. Choosing a web hosting provider

Alright, the second step I did was choosing a “home” for all my web pages as well as my database. I initially thought of using my own PC as the home web server to save money. After balancing out the advantages and disadvantages of this option, I decided to buy a web hosting from a professional company, 1&1 Internet Inc (http://www.1and1.com). The advantages of home server is that I don’t have to pay for anything (except for the monthly Internet fee). However, I have to take care of everything from configuring, maintaining, protecting your server. That creates more job for me as a blogger. If I had picked that option, there would have been no way that I can sit here and write this blog entry now. Buying a web hosting is the best choice for us, the bloggers. And if you are in Canada or US, i would suggest my web hosting company 1&1 Internet Inc. You can take a look at it through this link.

3. Choosing a domain name

There are many site that you can buy domain names. The average price for a normal domain name is $10 - $15. Here are some sites that you can buy from:
www.godaddy.com
www.yahoo.com (pretty cheap with Yahoo account for the first domain)

Now back to my story.
My blog then had a “home” already. Lucky me that the moment I bought the package from 1&1 Internet Inc., they gave me 2 free domain names, so I tried to make up some names that make people remember me easily. I chose briannguyen.net at the beginning. Well, I was late because someone took it already :(. (Note: if you can, the sooner you buy your domain, the better). BNguyen dot NET was my second choice and I decided to stick to this domain. “Phew, new home, new address. What else do I need to do?,” I wondered. “Perhaps, my next steps are configuring my web server and installing a blog system

4. Configuring your web server

You can wonder why I needed to configure my web server. That was my mistake at the beginning and it cost me 3 days to make my web server work correctly. Why? 1&1 provided me a blog tool that I could use to create my own blog, but that tool was only for Windows flatform. So I bought the my hosting plan with Windows platform. Playing around with the tool, I was kind of disappointed because its poor look and most importantly, I couldn’t customize the layout the way I like. I lost a day for that for nothing. After that, I suddenly remembered that there was a blog system called Word… something. Trying to Google the term, i finally for Wordpress. Poor me again, the Wordpress used Linux flatform. I, thus, had to call Technical Support to make a change for my web server. I took me 24 hours for the system changed and worked correctly. (Note: be more careful with the flatform of your web server and your applications).

(To Be Continued…)

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written by Brian Nguyen \\ tags: 1&1, 1&1 Internet Inc., blog, create blog, install Wordpress, setup blog, webserver, Wordpress