- It couldn't be any easier than using wordpress.com for your blog. It's quick and free. Unless I mention otherwise I'm assuming you're doing the setup on a PC or Mac. Any standard browser (IE, Safari, Firefox, Chrome) will be fine.
- Go to www.wordpress.com and click on the Signup Now button. Fill in the very simple form. You now have a blog with one post and one comment.
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There is no step 2 - you now have a fully functioning blog - but there are one or two things that you probably want to do
quite quickly
Remove the default post and comment Click on the Site Admin link under the Meta heading on the right of the blog. Click on the Posts link at the left of the admin screen. Hover the mouse over the Hello World! post and some links will appear underneath. Cick on Trash
Add a post of your own Click on Add New (next to Edit Posts at the top of the screen). Fill in a title for the post in the single line field where the cursor is. Tab to the big text area field and enter the content of the field. I'll leave you to explore the various buttons above the field and provide some suitable content, but don't get carried away, there are still a few more things you'll want to sort out. When you've finished your opening salvo, click on the blue Publish button at the right of the screen.
Change the About page Click on the Pages link at the right of the Admin screen. Click on About and then edit the page in the same way as you created your first post. Click on the blue Update button at the right hand side of the screen
Change your blog's tagline. The tagline is the line below your blog's title. To change this, from the Admin menu at the left of the screen chose Settings/General and change the Tagline (second item down). If you've had second thoughts about the name of your blog, you can also change this here (it isn't possible to change your blogs URL or WordPress login id). There are other settings that you might want to change on this page. When you've finished click on the blue Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen
Change the look of the site Remember at this stage you are only changing how the site looks on a PC or Mac, not how it looks on an iPhone. From the Admin menus choose Appearance/Themes. At the time of writing there are 82 different looks to choose from. Some of these have further tweeks that can be made (for example the default theme will let you change the colour of the header and set a background image). Click on a theme that interests you to see a preview of your blog using that theme. To choose the theme click on the Activate button at the top right of the preview (it can be quite hard to see). To reject the choice click on the X at the top left or tight of the preview
That's about all you need for now, but do explore all the other settings that are available