Giving you a level of control that you may or may not need, but considering how fast things are changing right now, the more you know, the more you control. The more you control, the more you can do.

Thanks to the giant code monkeys that came before, all you have to do is to follow directions, and do a bit of thinking.

1. Get a website name — GoDaddy will register the name for you (about $10 – $20 per year)

2. Get a webhosting company — IPowerWeb is one, there are many others (about $100 / year) — think about whether you are going to be providing lots of video for download or other bandwidth munching content.  Of course, you can link to other sources, so you can finesse some of this later.  However, embedded content is best; saves people hopping off your site and out of your control, and is faster to upload.

3. Build a Blog.  Good tools out there — this is about WordPress.  Download WordPress to your site.  IPowerWeb does this automatically; don’t forget to write down the admin and password — and don’t call it ‘admin’.  For WordPress, you need to use these basics to get hold of everything:

Location of Blog: yoursite.com/blogname

Location of Blog Login screen: yoursite.com/blog/wp-admin

4. Get an FTP program — I use Cyberduck on a Mac. It’s free, but it’s so good, it’s worth donating to them.  FTP allows you to take local content you make in Photoshop, etc. and upload it to your site.  It’s also necessary when you do something like the following steps — so much easier when you can drag and drop.  (we used to have to type all commands – you needed to know the syntax, the order, the qualifiers, the pathnames, and then type it all correctly!)

5. Get a theme.  Yeah, you can use the default theme and look like everyone else, but if you download a cool theme, you can do more cool things.  The theme may download locally to your computer — not where you want it — you want it in the cloud (at the hosting site in the right directory — your wordpress theme directory — so you can use it.

6. Learn about zip and tar files.  These are ways to pack up a zillion files and subdirectories of which 99% you don’t need to ever touch, but are needed to do the magic. You should have an unpacking utility on your PC like Stuffit. Use Open With.. in the Finder on a Mac.

7. Find a theme, download it to your PC, unpack the zip, then open the README file.  These files give you the instructions you need to place the theme in the right place. Upload the theme folder and all the files inside using the FTP program (Cyberduck) to the right directory on your site.

8. Go back to the wp-admin screen, login, look for themes, and you should see your new theme for you to choose instead of the default one.  Select it, and it should install.  Check blog link — LAF should have changed.   You are in business.

9. Now with the tools at hand, you can customize the blog look and feel within the scope of the new theme.