In this post, we are going to discuss with you the ways to start a design blog from the ground up. We are going to discuss hosting to content management systems, and themes to marketing in traffic. If you already have a blog, then there still might be some useful information in this article.

So you want to start discussing the theories on your mind? But you have no where to do it? No problem, don’t fall into the free blogging platforms that display all their ads on your blog! If you have enough traffic to drive ads, then reap the benefits yourself!

Step number 1

Decide on a name, a theory of discussion and buy a hosting package. There may be many people out there who find better hosting services and would call what I am about to say, incorrect. But, if you are starting a blog just to test things out, I suggest using GoDaddy.com! GoDaddy used to be a horrible service, but recently they have increased their customer base and made some major changes. BE CAREFUL while ordering a domain name and a hosting account, they will trick you into adding things into your cart that you will not want. Also, the default domain name package is for 2 years, watch that! If you don’t want a domain name for 2 years, make sure you make it only 1 year to decrease the price. If you decided to go with GoDaddy.com, be sure to do a google search for, “godaddy+coupon+code”.

Resources: GoDaddy, Google

Step number 2

Now that you have a domain name your trying to figure out, “Which content management system should I use?” Well, in my own personal opinion, I would suggest Wordpress. Not only because Wordpress is one of the best open source content management systems, but there is an extensive amount of plugins and theme’s that will really boost your “starting off” point. Download Wordpress from http://www.wordpress.org. If you are unsure how to install Wordpress, it is actually quite simple and even someone with little web knowledge should be able to do it. Best of all, it is free, so if you can’t install it, just delete it!

If you are looking for other forms of content management systems, bigger companies like Gawker.com & Gizmodo.com use the TypePad backend. While I love TypePad, I personally don’t like the backend and really love the way that Wordpress is so easily customized. Another great and new content management system is Expression Engine. There have been some postings on forums discussing how it is kind of hard to start off with and I guess a little hard to customize (no personal usage, only research). I would suggest Expression Engine only to the advanced user.

Resources: Wordpress, TypePad, Expression Engine

Step number 3 

You got the blog up and now your ready to start customizing it. You decided to choose Wordpress (good idea), but now you hate the way Wordpress displays your blog! You don’t really have the time to make your own theme! What do you do? Well, here are a couple of websites that offer some of the BEST wordpress themes! This is no joke, these themes are very professional, SEO tested, and will astonish your friends and family! Derek Punsalan is one of the best Wordpress theme designers in my own opinion. He even created the theme that we currently use (temporarily). I suggest you browse his amazing Wordpress designed website for some of the themes that he offers. If you don’t seem to like anything that Derek offers, there is another place that might work perfectly for you. Well the amazing website called, “The Upstart Blogger” offers some of the BEST Wordpress themes I have seen in a very long time! I suggest you browse through there and decide on a Wordpress theme, start customizing and changing!

Resources: Derek Punsalan, The Upstart Blogger

Step number 4

The last and easiest step is to create some content, start discussing what made you start your blog. Start discussing other blogs and other large names. These words will be caught in google and in technorati and WILL increase your search engine results. But, if you have interesting articles RIGHT NOW and you want some viewers, here is how. You can start off with the usual social network shouting. Use digg.com & reddit.com to post your latest story. This is good and all, but the chances of your story being dugg or redd is very unlikely. You SHOULD however submit your best articles to digg.com just to create some sort of history for your digg account! Newsvine.com is a great website and with the correct heading to a story, your story could drag in much more traffic than digg could! I strongly suggest submitting your story to newsvine.com. But wait, you don’t want to submit your stories for others to choose from? No worries! If you have a blog that is design oriented, start finding some websites that offer broadcasts. A few good design broadcast websites are newstoday.com and stylegala.com! Submit your interesting story and well designed websites. It is up to you how you decide to market your website, but those are the places to market them! With a well designed blog and interesting stories, you will gain traffic! Another good trick is to submit your website to various CSS design galleries. If you designed your website, start submitting to cssvault.com & mostinspired.com to gain a good amount of traffic (if featured).

Well there you go, those are the 4 simple time consuming steps to creating a blog and gaining some traffic quite quickly. If you need help finding a good place for plugins, try this website here.