Yesss! Finally I’m self-hosting my blog! It feels like moving to my own house! It’s been very challenging and to be honest finding my way and figuring out how it works was not very easy at the beginning.

I found a hosting company that is recommended by WordPress . The company I’ve chosen is Just Host. I registered a new domain (burcuakyol.com) and then bought a hosting package. That was the easiest part. I started to watch the tutorial videos provided by Just Host and WordPress and realized that I needed an FTP client and then to download and install WordPress. I downloaded FileZilla and WordPress. I read the instructions and configured FileZilla accordingly. To do it, you will need some information that your hosting company provides. (They e-mail you all the details.)

After spending two hours following the instructions and installing WordPress, an error message appeared. Apparently, I made a little mistake and the installation wasn’t completed. That was a very frustrating moment because everything had gone smoothly until that message, I was expecting a welcome message and it was 3 o’clock in the morning! Anyway, I sent a message to the support team of Just Host. They replied to me in half an hour saying that I could have installed WordPress with a single click!!! There is a system called Fantastico and it is very very easy to install WordPress using that. Finally, I had WordPress installed on my web site.

By the way, I was thinking that WordPress software was something that had to be installed on the computer but it isn’t, it is installed on the server. It has a Dashboard like I used to have on Edublogs. However it offers more flexibility in terms of themes and plugins (and many more things that I haven’t discovered yet.) There are plenty of free WordPress themes and plugins available and you can easily search and install themes and plugins from your administration panel. WordPress provides very clear instructions for installing plugins or changing the look of your blog and it is possible to learn some basic codes this way. Writing posts, creating pages, inserting photos, etc. is very easy like it was on Edublogs.

You may want to know about the role of an FTP client in self-hosting. You use it to transfer files from your computer to your web site . On the server that the hosting company provides for you, there is a directory of folders and files.

For example, if you want to change the header image of your blog, you have to connect to your server via FTP and drag the image to the specified directory. The directory that you are going to upload the file is given on the ‘theme options’ menu. Here is a screenshot from my FTP client.

Anyway, this post is not for giving technical information and also I am not the right person to do that. I even might have used wrong terms while describing the process. I just want to show that it is worth trying and not that difficult if you want to learn more about the technical side of blogging. The hosting company that you choose is very important. WordPress works best in a rich hosting environment (as WordPress says and I agree). Getting instant support is very important. I am happy at my new place but I always recommend Edublogs to my colleagues as it is a great platform for blogging!

I wonder how this post looks to people who are experts in self-hosting and WordPress stuff… Any comments?:-)

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