Guest Blog: WordPress.com – Learn how to get started!
Posted by Nile | Posted in Blogging | Posted on 15-06-2009 | 11
This is a guest post.
While Blondish.net helps more with people using WordPress on self-hosted, WordPress also offers a place for bloggers to start. If you are unsure of starting a website for blogging or to add a blog to your current site, try using the free WordPress.com services first.
Note from Nile about Guest Blogger.
Please welcome Amy Ravit Korin (@interactiveAmy on Twitter) as a guest. I met her at WordCamp Chicago. She came to find out more about WordPress and became a new blogger. I have asked her to blog as a new blogger that has used WordPress.com as their startup spot for blogging. Her WordPress.com blog is also interactiveAmy.
Congratulations, you’ve decided to start a blog! Now what?
That was me, less than a week ago. I had the good fortune of attending WordCamp Chicago, a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. Well, everything except for getting started, that is. In a room of 200, I was one of a handful that wasn’t already a blogger. Intimidating? It could have been, rather I seized the opportunity to learn from my peers and decided right then and there that on day two I was coming back with a blog!
I had a website, interactiveAmy.com, but it wasn’t on WordPress and it didn’t have the capabilities to support the type of blog I wanted. So I issued a tweet for help.

Jason Pelker (@jpelker on Twitter) was the first to respond, and we met up during a break. Jason listened to my dilemma, how to switch my static domain to WordPress, and assured me I could do it! He also told me that he didn’t think I was ready to start a self hosted blog, so he directed me to WordPress.com to get started with a free WordPress hosted account.
Jason could tell that I was a smart cookie, so he pointed me in the direction of the WordPress.com support page, and then said to figure it out on my own. So there I sat, the last one to leave the WordCamp conference room – busy logging in and setting up my interactiveAmy.wordpress.com account.
And that was that! With additional hand holding from Dan Schulz (@danschulz on Twitter), I was determined to go home and figure it out. And I did! Day two of WordCamp I came back with a blog!

I am Nile Flores, a sassy web designer and developer - a webmistress. I live in Centralia, Illinois, which is about an hour from St. Louis. Blondish.net is where I can freely share my love of all things involving web design, graphic design, web developing, and even my experience as a blogger. Join me on my journey. I hope I do not disappoint.




If you look up the term ‘
Technically Blondish.net turned 3 years old during May. With the layout to be unveiled, it will be the 8th version. If all goes well with this version, I will be retiring the others (Premium Blondish and Mustang), and giving them out as free WordPress layouts. I have already been asked about the Premium Blondish layout and I will strip it of the ‘blondish’ information for the layout. If anyone wants customizations of it, I charge $50 and I allow you to do anything you like, plus you get support for your layouts. (Yeah, sorry, had to slip that in, but I have already done a few customs using this template.)
As announced by
I had the awesome opportunity to listen to a presentation from
Sometimes simple can be good, especially if it is a nifty site like a short URL site or perhaps a site that searches domain names, or even favicon manipulation sites. 




