The first decision you have to make is where your blog is going to live. You have two basic options when creating your site:

• Do it at https://wordpress.com
• Install on a third-party web server (usually hosted by an external company)

Let's look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of each of these two options.

The advantage of using WordPress.com (https://wordpress.com/) is that they take care of all the technical details for you. The software has already been installed, and it will be upgraded for you whenever there is an upgrade available. You're not responsible for anything else but the management of your content. A major disadvantage is that you lose almost all of the theme and plugin control you'd have otherwise. The other advantages and disadvantages are as follows:

• WordPress.com will not let you...

WordPress.com (https://wordpress.com) is a free service provided by the WordPress developers, where you can register a blog or non-blog website quickly and easily with no hassle. However, because it is a hosted service, your control over some things will be more restricted than it would be if you hosted your own WordPress website. As mentioned earlier, WordPress.com will not let you edit or upload your own themes or plugins. Apart from this, WordPress.com is a great place to maintain your personal site if you don't need to do anything fancy with your theme or the source code of your site in general. To begin, go to https://wordpress.com and click the big Get Started button:

Right away, WordPress will take you through the step-by-step wizard that makes the setup process super easy. First, you get asked about the type of website that you want to build....

The WordPress application files can be downloaded for free if you want to perform a manual installation. If you've got a website host, this process is extremely easy and requires no previous programming skills or advanced blogging experience. Some web hosts offer automatic installation through the host's online control panel. One of these automatic installation methods is described later in this chapter.

A good first step is to make sure you have an environment setup that is ready for WordPress. This means you need to ensure that the server meets the minimum requirements and that your database is ready. For WordPress to work, your web host must provide you with...

Some web hosts provide their customers with access to a range of auto-installer scripts for various web platforms, including WordPress. Most of these auto-installers have quite similar functionalities, and the actual process of installing a new WordPress site is similar as well. Here, we're going to focus on one of these scripts, Softaculous (https://www.softaculous.com/).

Softaculous is the preferred method of WordPress installation for many professional developers and bloggers. In some cases, it's the fastest method when dealing...

WordPress installs a powerful and flexible administration area where you can manage all of your website content and do much more. Throughout the book, this will be referred to in shorthand as the wp-admin or WP Admin.

Now that you've successfully installed WordPress, it's time for our first look at the wp-admin. There are some immediate basic changes that are recommended to make sure your installation is set up properly.

You can always get to the wp-admin by visiting http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/ (this URL is also the reason why we're calling it the wp-admin). If it's your first time there, you'll be re-directed to the login page. In the future, WordPress will check whether you're already logged in and if so, you'll skip the login page.

To log in, just enter the username and password you chose during the installation. Then...

One final point that's worth discussing in this chapter is the matter of WordPress avatars. Although WordPress provides a number of possibilities in this area, the most popular one revolves around an external service, Globally Recognized Avatar (Gravatar). Gravatar started as a tool meant to provide people with the capability of using the same profile picture (avatar) across the entire web.

What this means in plain English is that whenever you sign up for a web service, and if the service is Gravatar-compatible, so to speak, then it will fetch your profile picture from Gravatar automatically, instead of forcing you to upload it manually from your computer. Apart from the profile picture, Gravatar also gives you a personal online profile that anyone can see whenever they click on your (Gravatar) profile picture or something called Hovercard. Now, what does...

You have learned a lot in this chapter. Now, you can install WordPress on a remote server, change the basic default settings of your website, write posts, and comment on those posts. You also have a basic understanding of how WordPress.com works, and how to handle your online image or brand via Gravatar.

In the next chapter, you will learn about all the other aspects of a blog post that you can control, additional ways to add posts, as well as the intricacies of managing and controlling comments and discussions on your blog.