Hi readers đź‘‹.
Today I will be writing about my current blog setup. It’s very bare-bones at the moment, but even then, I had to make a bunch of decisions to set it up. Noting them down would be helpful for other new starters + myself if I ever start another blog in the future.
Here is a brief overview of how the blog is currently configured:
- Blogging Platform: WordPress
I initially considered Ghost due to its sleek look and simplicity but then decided against it due to its membership model structure. Plus, in the long run, it seemed far less customizable than WordPress.
For example, I want to make sure I don’t have any broken links on my blog and there is no plugin for that on Ghost. There is one on WordPress. - Web Hosting: Host Koala
This is a brand-new blog with zero readers at the moment. Who knows if I will even be writing here in one month or so. Until I become regular at blogging and have more confidence in myself for being disciplined with this, I would rather not spend too much money.
With that in mind, I found HostKoala has a 5$/year plan which was cheap enough for experimentation. Will switch to a better service if required in the future.
- HostKoala has good documentation on setting up SSL, DNS, domain, and WordPress on their sites.
- Make sure to use the correct PHP version. I used 8 initially and emojis didn’t work. I had to downgrade to 7.4 to make emojis work again.
- Domain: Doze Host
This is a Bangladeshi company. I use them for my domain and web hosting of forthright48.com. I needed a domain to configure HostKoala’s VPS, so I just bought it from them.
I could have bought the domain for cheaper from somewhere else but didn’t want to research/investigate a new provider again. Plus the difference was of 2-3 GBP only. - Theme: Twenty Twenty Two
This is one of the free themes WordPress provides. Looks simple and minimalistic, just the way I like. - Plugins
I haven’t configured many plugins yet. Just a few to make writing blogs a bit more bearable. I will be installing more in the future.
- WP Dark Mode: To enable dark mode 🌚 for the editor and website. Otherwise, it’s too bright to work.
- Emoji Toolbar: I like using emojis. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good emoji picker configured on my laptop yet. Until that’s configured, the plugin will stick around.
That’s it. I didn’t bother configuring more stuff until I had more posts. I guess the next thing I would need to configure would be metrics so that I can measure how the blog is performing.
Until next time,
Samiul