Have you ever shared your valuable knowledge, exciting ideas or unique experience to someone, and felt happy and fulfilled after that? Maybe you even helped that person out a big time and changed their life by sharing your stories.
If yes, then consider blogging and open yourself a blog. Let the world read from you, start creating, and maybe this will become not only your new hobby but also a potential source of income.
This blog you are reading from right now was just born 2 weeks ago (11 March 2025, to be exact), but it had been conceived for almost a decade (well, 7 years 11 months and 20 days if you’re into details). Finally after years of hesitation, and in fact, give-up without even a proper try, I know it’s time I embark on this adventure and give my best for it.
Starting with creating and owning this virtual world of mya5corner.com.
I took 2 courses from reputable and successful bloggers, documented and summarized all the notes. I spent time researching on multiple extra resources, designing my own free WordPress theme from scratch (to save extra bucks and to understand better how this all works – more on this later).
I did what I only knew before as mere terms to my ears, like setting up a mailing list and complying with GDPR. Figuring out all the bits of technical and legal requirements for a website was honestly not what I thought I was signing up for to become a blogger.
BUT OMG the result is rewarding! Taaa…daaa…here we are in this virtual but very real space of mya5corner blog!
I want to SHARE WITH YOU all of that, what I learned and HELP YOU get an idea how to do all this by yourself (yes you totally can!) and prepare for a smooth start into this long yet exciting journey. A nice start can really help ease the process.
As a beginner to a beginner, especially one who just came out from the other end, I understand quite well what can be the struggles, the booby traps, the doubts and hesitations, etc.
Sometimes, experienced bloggers might oversee how it once felt a beginner and teach with assumed knowledge. Therefore, I put together this BLOG SETUP STEP-BY-STEP sharing from a beginner to a beginner, in the order that should make the most sense for us beginners (very important to not go nuts and lose yourself).
Plus, all of these knowledge is 2025 fresh & updated!
I’d recommend you grab this 30-page FREE PDF guide to get everything saved in your reading folder and especially, all the bonus tips & tricks and technical guidance, which I unfortunately have to cut short to not turn this blog post into a novel.
Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links. When you click these links, I may get a small commission. It won’t cost you anything, and it helps me to run this site. I only promote products and services that I think are great.
STEP 1: FIND YOUR NICHE (but don’t overthink it)
Your niche is what you want to blog about.
Put simple and short, finding a niche is to answer these questions:
- What you are interested in writing about
- Who will be your target reader
- How can the topics you’re writing about help solve a problem for your target reader
There are more questions you can go in depth with to figure these questions out (I put up a list in the PDF guide mentioned above).
I would recommend taking out your Bullet Journal to brainstorm the ideas. If you’ve been a seasonal Bullet Journallers, there might even be notes that give you a hint already.
The booby trap to avoid: DO NOT spend so much time overthinking trying to find “the one true” answer. Know that, your niche can still evolve, even change over time with you and your blogging maturity. In fact, you may need some time to niche down.
Take me and myA5corner as an example. I was struggling finding my right niche: I know I want to write about personal development, but it’s not specific enough. Now, it gets clearer that I want to write about personal development for Bullet Journal users and language learners.
I want to help you, my 20s-early 30s fellows to achieve your goals in life, through becoming a 1% better version of yourself, and through learning languages and opening the door to go see the world. (By the way, I could learn to set up this blog by myself because I could understand English, it is amazing what knowing English can do!)
STEP 2: CHOOSE YOUR WEBSITE DOMAIN
A website domain is its URL link, such as mya5corner.com or google.com.
Upon determining your niche, you need a name for your baby blog that reflects the blog theme or niche. It’s time to play around with different word combination (I hope your brainstorm journal pages above should help ease this process!).
A couple of tips I learned are:
- Use name + verb: such as back when this corner was still called moca.corner (told ya name can change), I had my free blog called ‘mocawrites.wordpress.com’
- Use your favorite playlist to spark inspo
- Even use your full name as actually manyyy bloggers (and YouTubers) do
You would want a .com rather than .org or .store, whatever else.
A word of advice: SAVE YOUR TIME & EFFORT by checking in parallel if your website domain is still available. Go to: Bluehost Domain Check and type in the names you came up with.
If your domain name is taken, you won’t be able to buy it, or at least, not able to buy it for a normal price of about $13 or €12. By the way, I actually got my domain name for FREE, continue reading to learn how.
STEP 3: GET WEB SELF-HOSTING (AND A DOMAIN) FOR YOUR WEBSITE
After deciding on what to blog about and your blog name, let’s get a web self-hosting for your website and a one-year free domain name on top.
First, what is web-hosting and why do you want a web self-hosting service?
Web-hosting is where your website or blog will live on the Internet, where all your blog assets like files are located.
Self-hosting allows you to truly own your website. I have had my free wordpress.com blog for quite a while, and it comes with certain limitations. For one, I don’t own this domain and for two, “wordpress.com” was always part of the site URL, which is not really that professional as “.com”, among other disadvantages.
I also read that self-hosted websites have faster site loading speed and hence, better user experience. If a site is too slow to load, you’d most definitely lose patience and jump to another page already, right? So do your readers!
There are different hosting providers out there, like Bluehost, Siteground, etc. You can do your research, but I chose Bluehost as:
- It is #1 selected by WordPress (and WordPress is my favorite blogging platform, more in Step 4)
- It is recommended by famous bloggers, including those I learned from (both have been using Bluehost for more than 5 years of their blogging career without issues).
- With 12-month hosting plan, you get a FREE domain name (For me, it was a save of €11.97 for mya5corner.com domain)
Hop onto Bluehost website and choose your preferable hosting plan. As a beginner, I am happy with the BASIC plan for 12-month period and the FREE domain name on top.
Another thing (and the only extra thing) that I also purchased is the Domain Privacy Protection. This is to keep yours and your website information secure.
I know this step might take you some time to sleep on, as it requires a little investment. If you are serious about having a site of your own, where you can find your voice, spread your ideas, help others, (and maybe make money in the long run?), then this step is a good commitment to get you TO START NOW.
Once you finish this step, you’ll be thrilled to start quickly. Don’t waste your time as I did all these years sticking with the free wordpress.com!
STEP 4: SETUP BLUEHOST AND WORDPRESS (the recommended blogging platform!)
After choosing your Bluehost hosting plan, filling in necessary information and making the payment, you will get to create a Bluehost password AND also get WordPress automatically installed in Bluehost.
Hang on, what is WordPress and why do we like it?
If Bluehost is the “house” of your blog, hosting the “ground” of it, WordPress is the blogging platform that takes care of the “interior design”.
I honestly just love WordRress after all these years using the free wordpress.com, and I’m also very much familiarized with its dashboard by now, so it is a quick “sold” for me to continue using this platform.
I was also advised not to go with Wix, Squarespace, etc.
WordPress is another reason why I went with Bluehost instantly too, when I learned that WordPress is integrated with this hosting service. No need to do anything extra. WordPress is there, once I finished setting up my Bluehost account.
If you’re new to WordPress, take a moment to navigate around the navigation panel on the left-hand side, or pause here to find a quick WordPress tour on the Internet.
Above is the WordPress dashboard from within Bluehost. After 24-48 hours from the initial setup, you can log in WordPress directly, where most of your blog design and blogging happens. Just plug in this URL:
STEP 5: CHOOSE YOUR BLOG THEME
A blog theme is the appearance of your blog. It involves how your blog is displayed, the layout, the menus, the little details of color schemes and typography, etc.
Of all the steps, this is admittedly my biggest roadblock. I spent 1 WEEK contemplating, researching, some more contemplating on which blog theme I wanted. 1 WEEK, from when I purchased the domain and my blog was technically already alive, I couldn’t decide and move forward with this step. But I did come to some learnings:
- Themes or looks are not as important as your content value. Consider this to not waste so much time.
- Good themes should be lightweight and enable fast speed.
- Good themes are supposedly paid, especially when your blog starts to get lots of traffic.
BUT:
- Good themes can also be free, with options to go premium
The latter is my current choice, at least until my blog requires an upgrade and I figure out exactly what my blog and I need in a premium theme.
So what is my current theme?
I did my research and came down to these 2 free theme options: Generate Press and OceanWP. You can find reviews on the Internet (here is one article I liked reading from). At the end, I went with OceanWP for these reasons:
- It allows more free customization features (which GP would charge as Premium)
- It has more active downloads than GP in the last 6 months (Sep-24 to Mar-25)
This is my very honest option of a beginner.
Do your research, but know that themes can still be updated and even switched out. Just with anything else about blogging so far, your niche, your domain, etc. You certainly don’t need to pay for any web designers (not yet at least!) for this step either.
Another good sign for me about these free theme options is that, they are by default on WordPress Theme store, ready to be installed into your new blog right away. (So no need to donwload and upload anything).
From the WordPress dashboard, navigate to Theme section, and apply your theme. DONE!
If you decided to purchase a theme, then follow the theme provider’s instruction to install it to WordPress.
That’s it! Your blog has been officially born into this world. Wow!
STEP 6: PUBLISH YOUR FIRST POST
HEY CONGRATULATIONS! You have made it halfway to launch your beautiful new blog, a real digital world of yours, your words, your ideas, your people!
If you have made it this far, BE PROUD! And KEEP IT UP, the fun journey has just only begun.
Unlike other bloggers, I would personally advise you to take a short break from dealing with technical stuff at this point and try drafting a mini blog post. After all, we are here to write, to create something, right?
I was so buried under the technical topics of customizing my theme that I wish someone could have gently reminded me to take a break, refresh my mind and get some fun with blogging.
I care about your mental health and I want you to take this ride with fun and ease.
SO take a break. Just draft a few paragraphs or lines. Just to feel how real this is becoming.
Writing about this exact experience of bringing a blog to life can be such a brilliant idea. Or write about that topic that made you want to build a blog in the first place for.
In fact, writing and publishing a post is necessary for you to judge the design of your blog post area, the readability and aesthetics of the fonts and sizes of your text, the color combination, etc. You need some content to further design your blog.
STEP 7: INSTALL MUST-HAVE PLUGINS & CONNECT GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Let’s get back to design your blog.
As we may have different themes, I will not go into the details of how to design (or re-design) the blog theme. Get into Appearance > Customize and start all the fun with colors, fonts, etc. Go one by one through all the section and play around with different options.
What I can help you with is to share with you what else you can add to your blog to add certain extra features, such as “plug-ins”. They are mini pre-coded software that you can download within WordPress or download from the provider and upload to WordPress.
Below is the list of must-have plugins, which I cross-checked from 3+ different blogging resources that they ALL use:
| Plug-in Name | Functionality | Cost | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| UpdraftPlus | to back-up your blog | free or premium (free is good to start) | need to download from WP |
| Akismet Anti-Spam | to keep your blog safe from spam comments | free | need to download from WP |
| YoastSEO | to help optimize your blog posts for Search Engine Optimization | free or premium (free is good to start) | it comes with OceanWP theme |
| Wordfence Security | to protect your blog from hackers, malware and malicious attachs | free or premium (free is good to start) | need to download from WP |
| MonsterInsights | to help ease the integration with Google Analytics (more below) | free or premium (free is good to start) | it comes with OceanWP theme |
If you’d like an instruction on how to install plug-ins, I add extra pages in my FREE PDF guide to walk you through this process. I will also throw in there how to set up Google Analytics with the plug-in MonsterInsights.
Google Analytics will help you answer these questions about your blog one day: who are your readers and where they come from, how many visitors and page views per day, week, month, etc. does your blog have. And more. These are valuable insights to not only improve your understanding of your readers but also ultimately translate into your blog performance. So don’t miss out on this step on my guide ;).
STEP 8: SETUP WIDGETS
What are widgets and how are they different from plug-ins?
Let’s take an example: what you can see on the right-handed sidebar is the work of widgets. These are mostly from the OceanWP theme or WordPress themselves. Sometimes, widgets also come with installing plug-ins.
These widgets add more contents and features to your blog. They are usually located on the sidebar or footer.
You can use my site as a reference point, where I have on the side bar, widgets for:
- A short “About Me” (which is also linked to About page)
- A little image of me
- A list of my most recent blog posts
- Social media icons (why don’t we connect?)
- Live Instagram feed
On the footer, I have widgets that link to social media, static pages and my mailing list.
How to set up these widgets: depending on what’s available from your blog theme, but the general places to go check are Widgets section from WordPress menu or Appearance > Widgets, like:
I’d recommend customize Widgets for the
Default Sidebar and 2-3 Footers.
STEP 9: SET UP MENUS TO STRUCTURE YOUR BLOG
Navigational Menus are important, not only to structure your blog into organized sections but also to guide your readers systematically, so ultimately, they can find what they need from your blog easily.
My blog has 2 active Menus. One on the header area and the other on the footer area. You can also opt for another top bar menu, to separate your blog posts content and the higher-level website organization.
For example:
Blog Content Menu: to navigate among topics or categories of your blog. For MyA5Corner, that would be (1) Bullet Journal (2) Language Learning and (3) Goodies for Sharing
Top Bar Menu: to navigate among sections or pages of your blog. Normally, a blog would have (1) Home page, (2) About page, (3) Blog page and (4) Contact page. A Shop page and a Resources page are also common.
Footer Menu: located the bottom of the blog, which is less visible and frequently visited, this menu usually navigates readers to static pages like Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, etc. A Contact page and a link back to About page are also common.
This should give you an idea on how to organize your blog. For MyA5Corner, I currently merge Blog Content and Top Bar menus and just have one simple navigation guideline.
Depending on your installed theme, these menus might or might not be already available. If not, you can just create a new one.
If you need help on how to create menus, then hop onto a detailed walk-through in my FREE PDF guide. There I will also show you how to create categories to make Blog Content menu, and how to populate Top Bar and Footer Menus. See you inside!
STEP 10: WRITE THESE STATIC PAGES (About, Home & Privacy Policy)
We have finally made it to the very final step of this process. Your blog is only one step away from the big launch HOORAY!
At this stage, your blog backbone should be fully in shape. You only need some more content, specifically that after setting up your blog menu, you must have realized that there are some pages that need extra work on, right?
They are currently all blank, so YEEES! It’s time to design a killer Home page to create the first impression with your readers as they first land on your blog and then write an About page to let your audience connect with you, trust you (and fall in love with what you’re doing).
By the way, About Page is considered the most important page of your entire blog!!!
Privacy Policy is one of the legal pages you must set up for your blog besides Terms & Conditions and Disclaimers, depending on your blog business and activities. You must be responsible and do some research here, especially when you monetize your blog.
Luckily, Privacy Policy is provided by WordPress when I installed Bluehost and WordPress. I did review everything and disclosed in full information where it is required, such as the use of Google Analytics and cookies, among other topics. You can also consider this resource for support.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. The information in this post is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice in any way. I am not liable for any damages resulting from using the information in this article. Please consult a lawyer for advice on your unique situation.
So this is it!
YOUR beautiful world of blogging is a real thing now. I wish you all the success and all the fun with your blog. Don’t stop experimenting and learning more about blogging.
As a beginner, I am also constantly teaching myself and implementing enhancements to MyA5Corner. Here is a favorite resource of mine: https://www.wpbeginner.com/
If you do get a blog, I hope to see it! I will also keep sharing more about my blogging journey, so sign up for MyA5Newsletter and stay in touch.
Till next time! Yours, Suani.