I have begun working on the 50 Things To Do to Start a Blog from Scratch from my first post called Starting a Blog from Scratch. I have changed the tagline from “Just another WordPress blog” to “To Blog or Not to Blog”. I changed the permalink structure. I added a category called “Getting Started”. In this post I will begin showing you screen shots to help you through the process. Learning to start a blog from scratch isn’t easy but I think it you will discover that it is a lot of fun!

Changing the Tagline.

When you open your blog for the first time you will see a header that looks like this:

It should have the title you gave it and a tagline underneath it. The standard tagline is “Just another WordPress Blog”. You want to change this and you probably will change it again before it’s all over. So here is what you need to do. On the right side of the page you will see a description that says Meta. The first option is Login. When you press Login you should see the following screen:

Enter your Username (you created this when you set up your WordPress account) and your Password (also created when you set up your WordPess account). You will then go to the WordPress dashboard page.

To change your tagline you need to go and click on the Options button. You will see the following screen:

Now you need to enter in a tagline. I entered “To Blog or Not to Blog”. When you have entered your new tagline press Update Options.

Here is what the change looks like:

Changing the Permalink Structure

You need to change the permalink structure for SEO purposes. At the WordPess dashboard go to the Options button and the go to Permalinks.

Pick the Custom, specify below option and the type in /%postname%/. Press the Update Permalink Structure and you are done with that.

Add a Category

I added a Category called “Getting Started”. When you begin to write posts (I have an article on this blog about how to use the WordPress Editor for writing pages and posts)you have a category provided called “Uncategorized”. To add a category just go to Categories at the right hand side of the posts page, type in your new category, and hit add. Your new category will show up on the screen. Just click on the box next to it for your post to be put there. Uncheck the box that says Uncategorized and you have a working category.

Our next task is to get and install a different WordPress theme. I will cover that in the next post called 50 Things to Do to Start a Blog from Scratch - Part 2.