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Welcome to my blogging resources!
You don’t just start a blog in a couple of minutes. It takes thorough preparation, a lot of research, inspiration and just a lot of general things you have to figure out.
But you probably know this already, otherwise you wouldn’t have looked into these blogging resources!
I didn’t know a thing about blogging before I purchased my domain name. Nothing at all! I learned everything the hard way, by doing it. This is why I want to relieve a bit of that stress for you and list my blogging resources below.
A little warning beforehand: my blog is still a work in progress and it’s not perfect at all! However, I want to share my journey with you! This is why this page will be updated regularly.
Hosting
I signed up for hosting through Dreamhost. I decided to give myself 1 year of time to try if blogging would be something for me and then evaluate.
You will see that most bloggers promote Bluehost. I considered that, but the reason I didn’t sign up for them is that they require you to pay extra for things that should be essential such as SSL certificates. (With Dreamhost this is included in their package.)
Moreover, Dreamhost has an excellent customer service! I screwed up my website several times and they were always able to solve the problem immediately!
The only downside I experienced with Dreamhost is that their hosting is a bit slower than other hosting platforms so that might be something I have to look into in the future but for now, I am very happy with their service!
WordPress Theme
The WordPress theme I use is called Masonry Blog. This is a free WordPress theme I am really happy about. The result of this is what you can see now ;).
WordPress plugins
Plugins? I didn’t know what they were before I started my blog through WordPress.
And at first, I thought the more the better! But apparently, that’s not the case. Moreover, the less the better! That is why you need to choose the best ones!
But what plugins are the best the choose? I chose:
- Yoast SEO
- Wordfence Security
- Cookie Notice
- Really Simple SSL
- Redirection
Yoast SEO is the number one plugin you need for WordPress! This plugin will handle all the Google-related SEO stuff, so you don’t have to worry about that too much! It’s really my number one plugin that I would never consider deleting. Best of all, it’s completely free!
I believe Wordfence Security is absolutely necessary to keep your site safe. It will take care of a lot of security issues that normal people just don’t understand. This is also a free plugin that I highly recommend!
Another necessary free plugin is Cookie Notice. To comply with international laws you have to make sure that your readers are informed of their information you store on your site. Therefore, you need a cookie banner. Cookie Notice will take care of that banner, so you can
comply with these laws without any problems. It’s very easy to use and very necessary too! (If you want to know more about all the legal stuff of blogging check out Mariam’s Legal Handbook for bloggers!)
Any good website needs an SSL certificate. This certificate will make sure the data on your site is protected. Usually, you’ll buy it together with your hosting, but you still need a plugin to implement it onto your website. I use Really Simple SSL and this is still working great for me!
When you start blogging, you’ll make mistakes and learn from those. One of my mistakes was the name I gave to my permalinks. However, you cannot just change all your links to your websites, because that will generate an error. You need to redirect the old URLs to the new ones. I figured out the best way to do this is with the plugin Redirection. This plugin managed to redirect all my existing links to the new ones without showing an error to my audience!
The legal side
One of the unintended side effects of starting a blog is having to deal with the legal side of it. I honestly did not know where to start. How should we be able to know international law so suddenly???
At that point (in full struggle about privacy policies etc.) I came across Mariam’s website Entrepreneur Legal Corner and her Legal Handbook. This was such an eye-opener for me!
Suddenly, I understood why I need all those legal pages on my blog and what the importance is of having decent policies.
In her book, she explains exactly what you need to do, legally, as a blogger, what laws to take into account and what to do to be compliant when making affiliate sales and running giveaways.
I really recommend this book for everyone who doesn’t know anything about the ins and outs of legal policies. It has helped me so much in the process of understanding everything! I believe it is absolutely essential in developing my blog!
Take a look at Mariam’s legal handbook here!
The biggest surprise for me when I started out blogging was that you could actually use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog! Say whut?!
After struggling with my Pinterest strategy for a long time I decided it was time to invest in a decent course to boost my blog traffic. But I also needed a lot of other help with all the other blog stuff. Luckily for me, the Ultimate Bundles Genius Bloggers Toolkit was on a flash sale!
Basically, this is a bundle with tons of courses about all kinds of subjects blogging-related at a HUGE discount. The genius strategy they use is to gather almost 100 courses together and sell it at $97, but only for a limited time! (The short time period allows them to sell it for such a discount.)
So, I rather impulsively decided to invest in it and start with their Pinterest section that included an ebook called ‘Manual Pinning Simplified‘. This really helped me understand a lot about Pinterest and best off all it made me understand what a good Pinterest strategy actually includes!
Check out the Manual Pinning Simplified ebook here.
Planning
I can’t say enough how important planning is! Without a decent planning I would not have reached a single thing with my blog.
Planning means sticking to a schedule and setting up goals for yourself in the future. To break these goals down and to make sure that I plan and finish all my tasks I’ve invested in an incredible planner that makes my life so much easier!
For a year now, I am using the goal planners from Best Self Co. They are simply incredible! Each planner allows you to set your goals, create healthy routines and plan every day and every hour!
The planner includes a weekly review of your goals and makes you grateful for the amazing things that happen every day and every week!
It is a 13-week planner, which might seem weird at first, but the advantage of such a planner is that you can start with it anytime during the year.
I am incredibly happy with my planner and this is why I also recommend it to you! I would not have reached so many goals if it wasn’t for the planner!
Take a look at their planners here.
Did you find the blogging resources you were looking for?
I hope you found all the blogging resources you were looking for or at least have an idea of what tools you can use to improve your blog. I’m still learning as I go, so this isn’t an exhaustive list. It’s just what I currently use and yes, this could be updated in the future when I find something better or when I discover other tools.
Anyway, I hope you’ve found this useful! If you love it or think it could help someone else as well, you’re welcome to share it!
