I use bluehost.com to host the macintoshhowto.com website. This means I pay blue host a monthly fee and they provide hard disk space and computing power to run the website. To actually run the website I use some software called  Wordpress. WordPress is a great platform to host a blog or website from – it’s very easy to set up, and most web hosting packages will include a one step wordpress install  like the one I describe here. Here’s how to set up wordpress using bluehost. Bluehost is very cheap and reliable. I’d say as long as your wordpress website is getting under 50,000 visits a month bluehost should do the job. Macintoshhowto is just starting to reach about 80,000 hits a month and I’ve been hitting the limit of bluehost so I’ve needed to go over some things and prune some plug-ins to keep the site running smoothly.

So here’s how to install and run wordpress…

1. You need to sign up for a web hostign package. I use bluehost.com for all my sites. They are great. When you signup you can register one free domain name so make sure you have a domain name ready to go.

2. Once you have signed yup with blue host, to install wordpress go to the c-panel and find the simple-scripts installer.

3. Click on wordpress:

There are some options you’ll need to fill in:

Select the latest version. Fill the rest in as follows:

4. That’s it!

Now you can login to your wordpress admin panel and make a post. (To login just go to your new website domain name and select ‘log-in’. Install a theme, set up some widgets and off you go!