The following WordPress setup instructions and screenshots came from setting up my website which is hosted by Bluehost.  Bluehost is one of the thousands of inexpensive web hosting companies out there that will allow you to install WordPress.  You certainly don’t need to choose Bluehost but from personal experience I can tell you that I’ve used them for a number of years to do development, testing, and hosting of my WordPress sites with no issue at all and find that they provide a ton of website goodies for $6.95/month.  If you are interested in learning more about this host try the link below otherwise I will assume that you have an existing web hosting solution that uses CPanel for it’s admin interface and SimpleScripts to install/uninstall website features.

To post your first blog entry you will:

1. Login to the admin section of your WordPress site
2. Upload Photos
3. Create a Blog Entry
4. Publish the Blog Entry

Let’s get started:

1. Navigate to your WordPress’s login url.  This is your website plus /wp-admin
2. Provide your login credentials and login.
3. Once you have logged in you will see the WordPress Dashboard.  From this Dashboard you can control just about every aspect of your WordPress installation.
4. In my case I’ve taken a bunch of screenshots for every blog entry and I’d like to bulk upload them to the server and then later include them in my blog entries.  To do this Click on the Media tab in the left hand column. 
5. The Media section will expand.  Click on the Add New hyperlink. 
6. Click the Select Files button and select the images on your computer to upload. You can upload multiple pictures at once this way which is a real time saver. 
7. Now that we’ve uploaded our photos we can go write our blog entry and insert the upload photos wherever we’d like within each entry.  We could insert pictures as we’re writing the entry but I find uploading pictures one at a time can be a pain.  Click on the Posts tab to navigate to the blog area. 
8. Click the Add New link in the Posts section. 
9. There are lots of things we can do on this page but right now we’re just going to add our title and our text.  Once we’ve done that we’ll insert pictures.  Go ahead and type in a blog title and body. 
10. I marked the locations in my blog entry (which I was working on in Microsoft Word) where images would be inserted.  To insert the actual images position the cursor in the correct location and then click the Insert Image link. 
11. In the Add an Image dialogue select the Media Library link. 
12. Find the image you are looking for and click the corresponding Show link.
13. Edit information as required and then click the Insert into Post button at the bottom. 
14. Once all of the photo’s have been added we’ll setup a new category for this blog entry bu clicking the Add New Category link in the Categories section.
15. Type your category name and click the Add New Category button.  Create as many categories as you care to.  I’ve added two categories: WordPress, and How To. 
16. Now comes the moment of truth.  Click the Publish button to publish your blog entry to the site. 
17. Now click the View Post link.
18. Voila!  You are now a WordPress Blogger!