Gosh, that was easy!
Starting with absolutely ZILCH experience on blogging apart from having a blog on LJ -- and I have no idea what's under the hood on LJ, I just know where POST and EDIT are -- I was able to get a blog set up under my very own shiny domain name. Ta-da!
Is pretty? Is nice? Is munchably crunchable?
Okay, all you pros are probably laughing at me, the we way we smile when someone announces their Squidoo lens is already in the top 1000, but still.
What I did:
1. I already had a good reliable account on ICDSoft, which has features like SQL.
1.5 If you don't have a website, you'll need one. Here's my intel on why I use it, and here's a referral if you want to sign up.
2. I had oodles of room on that account, but my registered domain-name was a bit odd. Until now I've only used that website for hobbies and photo storage.
3. So I "parked" a second domain name that overlays the original account. Either URL works. ICDSoft has a "domain parking" tool right in the control panel that lets you pay $10 to have them register and park a second name for you. Quick, easy.
Note: Since I started with a parked domain instead of a new one, someone with advanced computer skills visiting one of my domains could, in theory, find stuff only listed on the web using the other domain even if there's no links between them. But casual browsers will never know there's another domain and another chunk of stuff buried there that my blog and root directory don't link to. As long as I've only got natterings about Tolkien and a favorite video game over there, then it's personal but not potentially very embarrassing. I probably shouldn't be uploading nekkid pictures of Keira Knightley anyway. (Ha, that should get me some hits.)
4. After a little web searching, I chose Wordpress to set up my blog, because it's free. A lot of people like Movable Type, but they charge over a hundred dollars for a license if you might make some money with your blog.
5. Wordpress Installation Instructions are easy to follow, as long as you can go step-by-step and follow the code mumbo jumbo without question. I don't know what SQL is, but I can open a file and change "yourdomainhere" to my domain name without a clue what I'm doing.
6. I had one glitch, which is why using a good webhost is important. Apparently there's some special funky thing about ICDSoft that means the line that said "99% of you won't need to change this" in the instructions didn't apply to me. Luckily, ICDSoft has a nice online manual, so I just searched for "Wordpress" and the ICDSoft manual told me what needed to go there.
7. I hit install and BOOM, there it was. The User Dashboard for Wordpress is clean and well-laid-out with things like "Options" and "Get New Themes," so I was quickly able to find a pretty theme (well, not so quickly; I got distracted looking at the hundreds of pretty themes people have made) and start customizing.
The whole process took about an hour before I had a working blog page, complete with first entry, nice theme, customized links, and a bit of Google Adsense in a blank area I wasn't using. The layout junkie in me is twitching to make the Google ads look less ugly, but apart from that, I'm very happy!
