How to Add a Blog to Your Website

If you already have a website and you’re interested in adding a blog to it, the process is pretty simple. It’s mainly just like installing wordpress on a domain, except you can add it to a subfolder. When you do this, your blog will be located at yourdomain.com/blog/ instead of at yourdomain.com.

Here’s the steps to add a blog to your website:

1. Log in to your cpanel at www.yourwebsite.com/cpanel.

If you have a host that gives you cpanel access, like hostgator, just log in using the cpanel access login/password they provided you.

2. Click on Fantastico De Luxe.

Once logged into cpanel, scroll down to Software/Services and click on Fantastico De Luxe, the little blue smiley face. It looks like this:

3. Select WordPress on the following screen (it’s under the “Blogs” section):

4. Click “New Installation.”

5. “Install in Directory.”

Under “Installation location” you have a couple options. Make sure your proper domain is selected (only necessary if you have multiple domains within that hosting), and also fill in the section called “Install in directory” as depicted below:

This is where you name the folder where you want your blog installed. If you want your blog to be located at yourwebsite.com/blog/, then just type in “blog” (no quotation marks!). You may want to call it something like “news” or “articles” but just name it whatever you want.

6. Fill in remaining information.

“Admin access data” is the username and password you want to use when accessing your blogs admin area/dashboard in order to post content, etc.

You can change the information under “Base configuration” at any time from your wordpress dashboard, but let’s fill everything in now. “Admin nickname” is the public name for the administrator when he or she makes a blog post. It’s NOT a username, so you don’t have to worry about keeping that private. Make sure you have a valid email address and enter it in the Admin e-mail box. Replace your domain name with your site name (Your Website vs. yourwebsite.com) and enter a description/tag line/slogan if you wish.

7. Click “Install WordPress.”

That’s it! You’ve added a blog to your website!

Here’s a couple things to consider when you add a blog to an existing website:

• Mismatched designs. The design of your website and the design of your blog won’t automatically be the same. In fact, they’ll probably be very different. You can choose a WordPress theme that bests matches your existing site, or at least one that has a similar color scheme and/or layout. The only way to get them to match without getting lucky with a WordPress theme is to custom design your original site to match your blog or vice-versa.
• Separate Sites. Your original website and your new blog are essentially two different websites. The edits you make to one will not affect the other. You will have to maintain the hosting for the original site, obviously, as your new blog will still be dependent on that.
• Link them together. You’ll most likely want to add a link to your new blog on your original website, and also link to your original site from your blog.
• Consider converting to all WordPress. Depending on how much content you have on your original site, you may want to consider converting the original site to WordPress. WordPress is not just for blogs! You’ll note that the homepage of Make A Website Zone is like a static website, but I still have a blog page. This is all done with one installation of WordPress. This solves the first three considerations I mentioned previously. However, I started this website like that from scratch; you’ll have to weigh the cost/benefit if you want to convert all the content over into WordPress – either by doing it yourself or paying someone to do it.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them below.

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