How To Start A Food Blog

So you want to start a food blog? Great! It means more recipes for everyone to try. Also it means you will always have an online reference of all your recipes that can’t get lost like a piece of paper 🙂

I have put this guide together so anyone can start their own food blog no matter how little experience they have with blogging.

With this super simple guide, you will be up and blogging within just 30 minutes!

Domain & Hosting

First things first you need to pick a domain name (the website name/address for example mine is www.cookbakeeat.com).

You want to be different, be unique, you want it to represent you and your blog so think carefully about it. You don’t want to register something and then 6 months down the line you might want to change it, although you can, it’s best not to.

To come up with some ideas it’s a good to write lots of ideas down with input from friends or family and then ask a few people what their favorites are.

I would recommend using the .com extension as it is the one people recognize most. Although if you’re from a certain country e.g. the UK a .co.uk would also work well.

Once you’ve come up with your name you’ll need to check that no one else has registered it already. So you can go to BlueHost and enter your chosen name or use the box below to check if it is available.

If the domain is available it will say so you can register it (Wahoo!).

Next you will need web hosting to store your blog (it’s like your computer’s hard drive but on the internet!). I recommend using BlueHost they offer a starter plan that includes a free domain name and a personal email you can use for example yourname@yourfoodblogname.com.

Although the price is quoted monthly, you do have to pay in advance but this makes it cheaper. Some extras are automatically added which you can remove such as “Domain Privacy Protection” and “SiteLock Security – Find” unless you really want them.

Once you have filled in all your details and clicked submit your domain and hosting are ready!

Blogging Software – WordPress!

Once you’ve done the above you need to install something called WordPress. It’s a blogging software which controls how your blog will look and where you will be able to add posts / recipes to your blog. It is really easy to use and it’s free!

To install, it is really simple.

Firstly log in to your BlueHost hosting account (these details will have been emailed to you) and go down to the website section. You’ll see the icon “Install WordPress”.

On the next screen it will ask you where you want to install it, leave this field blank so it will be installed in the main directory of your website. Then click install, it will take a few seconds to do this and then will give you an admin URL and username/password. Make note of these so you don’t forget them! If you forget where to login to the admin section of WordPress it’s always yourfoodblogdomainname.com/wp-admin.

Blog Design

Are you still with me?! Great! Now we have a domain, hosting and WordPress installed, let’s make things look beautiful!

To do this we need to install a theme for WordPress. You want your blog to reflect your personality and the design will do this. You have two options for a theme either free or paid. You can check out all the free themes available on the WordPress website itself here. If you’re looking for something a bit more fancy then I would highly recommend checking out ThemeForest. This site has thousands of wonderful looking themes for you to use and doesn’t cost much.

To install your theme is really simple! From within your WordPress dashboard just go to Appearance > Themes and click Install Themes. If you’re installing a free theme just use the search function to find it and click install. If you’ve downloaded a theme from ThemeForest then go to upload, select the .zip file of your theme and click install now.