Yesterday I gave some thoughts the different blogging platforms and explained why I think WordPress is the best choice for most new bloggers. Today I'm going to show you how set up your blog and make some basic customizations to the look and feel.

Go to wordpress.com and click Sign Up Now.

Give yourself a username and password and choose the Gimme a Blog! option, then click Next.

Choose a name for your blog.

WordPress will automatically name it your username, but you can change it to anything you like. (You'll get an error message if the name is already in use).

Note: I'm going to discuss picking a good blog name later in the week so, for the time being, you might just want to give it a temporary name for testing. While you won't be able to change the URL later, you can create as many new ones under the same account.

You probably don't want the blog to turn up on Google while you're building it, so uncheck the Privacy box.

Click the Signup button. You'll have to wait to receive your confirmation e-mail before proceeding. It's up to you whether you want to fill out the profile information in the meantime.

Once you've activated your account, log in and you'll be taken to your dashboard. It's a little bit overwhelming at first glance, but we'll take it step by step.

Click the Visit Site button at the top left.

You'll see that WordPress has created an initial default entry using the default template. We're now going to customize the look.

Return to your dashboard and click the Appearance link in the left-hand nav bar.

Under the Browse Themes text, click the A-Z link so you can scroll through all the theme options until you find one you like. Under each image, you'll see a list of links, such as two-columns, left-sidebar, etc. that tell you what features that theme includes. If you click on one, it will filter the page so only themes with that feature will appear.

You can also use the Feature Filters link beside the Search box to let you filter on multiple characteristics at once.

Note: I highly recommend you pick a theme with a custom header, because I think that's the best way to really personalize the look of your blog. I also suggest you select widgets as well, because they can add some nice extra functionality to it.

When you see a theme you like, you can click the Preview button to see how your default blog looks with it.

If you don't like it, click the X at the top left to close the Preview. If you do like it, click the Activate link at the top right. This will take you back to the dashboard page and show you what options you can customize for that theme.

Note: I'm going with Regulus for this example. You might want to select the same one for the time being, so you can follow along with the various steps I'll be describing. You can apply a different theme at any time, although you may lose some settings you've made when you do so.

Click the Widgets link.

This page shows you all the available widgets for this theme (different themes have different choices). You can simply drag and drop any widget over to where you want it in the sidebar area. When you first drag it, you can set specific options. For example, Recent Posts is a common widget on most blogs, and this theme lets you give it a different name if you want, and choose the number to appear.

You can play around by adding and reordering widgets and then click the Visit Site button to see how they look. (You may need to close an open widget box before you can add another one to the sidebar). Here are some of the ones I like:

• Image (add a link to an image)
• Text (add any text at all)
• Recent Posts
• Recent Comments
• Archives
• Links (note you'll have to add the actual URLs using the Links button in the left nav bar)

Return to the Appearance > Themes page of the dashboard.

Click Current Theme Options.

This is where you can change the header of the page. You can upload your own (it gives you the dimensions in the text) or, in this case, you can choose from some existing images in the dropdown bar. This theme also lets you choose a different color scheme and has a few other options you can test out. Again, different themes will offer different options.

Note: If you're uploading an image that already has your blog name on it, you can hide the text version of it on this page as well. If you want it to display, but you want to change or delete the current description line (default is "Just another WordPress.com weblog"), you do that from the Settings link on the left-hand nav bar.

So those are the basics of getting your blog set up and making it look the way you want. Tomorrow I'll show you how to write and manage your posts. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please send them along!

Posted in Blogging, How To, Series, Social Media