Installing WordPress from scratch may be a little intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Many hosting companies now offer WordPress pre-installed, and you can get up and running with WordPress in a day (or less, depending on your experience level).
WordPress Hosting Comparison
Compare hosting companies based on price, service and other features - all companies offer WordPress pre-installed on their servers.
WordPress Setup
To set up WordPress, all you will need to do will be to go into your hosting control panel, go to the WordPress setup section, and fill in the blanks on the setup screen.
It will walk you through all of the steps (this is the first of three):
Adjust the Installation Defaults
Once you have your new blog set up, I recommend logging in and adjusting some of the default settings.
Under the Options Tab
Permalinks - Change the permalink structure to Date and Name Based (or just Name Based)
» http://www.emomsathome.com/blog/2007/07/11/sample-post/
Writing - Under Update Services (Pinging) there are 2 urls - go to this blog ping URL list and copy and paste the list into the field
General - Adjust time to your Time Zone
Reading - Change Syndication Feeds to show the most recent 20 posts
Under the Users Tab
Your Profile - Adjust the Display Name to your name (or whatever you want to appear, but I suggest it NOT be “admin” 
)
Under the Blogroll and Comments Tabs
Delete default Blogroll links and Mr Wordpress comment
Customize Your WordPress Installation
NOTE :: You may need to make some files writeable in order to customize your theme and other things. This is also called “chmod”. Here’s a quick how to for intermediate users, or call your hosting company and they can help with this. Here’s the guide from WordPress that also includes what files need to be changed. PS - This is another reason I recommend Blue Host, because I never had to bother with this stuff on their servers, they had it all taken care of automatically.
Customize your Template - links on how to do this are forthcoming, but I recommend starting out with a theme that has a good, clean code base that will help you rank well with the search engines.
Add Google Analytics - Go to Presentation –> Theme Editor and click on Footer. Find the < / body > tag and paste the code generated in your Google Analytics account:
Add a Favicon - Char wrote a start-to-finish favicon tutorial for the last Group Research Project
Up Tomorrow :: What are the Essential WordPress Plugins?
Up Yesterday :: Compare WordPress to TypePad
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Thank you so much! I’ve been wanting to move my blog from wordpress but I’ve been afraid of the process. I didn’t know there were companies that had wordpress already installed.
Good quick guide to installing WordPress - and it is definitely key to get that analytics script in there right away! That was the toughest thing for me when I started (not knowing anything about design/editing).
Check out BlueFur’s Managed Blog Hosting. They’ll install WordPress from the beginning, take care of any upgrades and they’ll even install Plugins for you. For no additional cost on top of the normal monthly fee. For less than $300 (CAD) you can even get a custom theme made for you!
It’s great for people who just want it to work, and just Blog without worrying about that sort of stuff.
I tried your advice and it worked. Thanx!!!
Great information, Wendy. I’m new to blogging - haven’t gotten one started yet - but I’ve heard a lot about WordPress. It seems to be one of the top choices for bloggers. I think I might be able to get that blog started. Thanks!!
I think the net needs more basic tutorials like this. I was so intimidated I had someone else help me, but it would have felt like a huge success to have accomplished it on my own.
Thank you so much for the post. Information and concise - great tips! Your sharing saved me from much sweat!
We are in the process of moving to a self hosted wordpress blog (right now on the night of Friday the 13th) and this information has been so useful! Thanks so much for sharing this info.
We still have to go through the plug in post and figure out how to transfer our theme, but I think we are close!
A good basic guide, although saying that those hosting companies have WordPress “pre-installed” could be a bit misleading. They have it available for you to do your own installation would be more accurate, although with Fantastico, as you have shown it is very easy.
Also, with Google Analytics and any other code like that (MyBlogLog, Technorati for example) I suggest putting them into a text widget. That way they are separate from your theme, so if you change your theme, they will be instantly available in the new one.