If you’ve been wanting to create a free WordPress blog, but don’t know how, you’ve come to the right place! Ever since blogging has reached the mainstream in the mid-2000s, it’s been growing. 

And a lot of people are wondering if blogging is still relevant because it’s been around for a while, and some people are curious whether it’s just a passing trend.

After so many years, the question remains the same, is blogging dead? 

Well, the answer is a big NO. 

Because people still read blogs, actually millions of them. 

And blogs are an important aspect of marketing. 

They help brands promote products and services and create brand awareness.

Therefore, if you think it’s too late for you to start a blog, it’s not!

And the good thing is, if you’ve wanted to create a blog, I’ve outlined 16 steps below so you can get started today.

Creating your first WordPress blog is easy, and it won’t cost you anything. You also don’t have to be a programmer or tech-savvy. 

And today, you’ll learn how to create your first ever blog step by step. 

What can you do with your free blog?

While you can create a free WordPress blog after this, it’s essential to keep in mind that there are limitations to a free blog.

Some of them are: 

1. You can’t customize everything.

2. You can’t monetize a free blog (I’ve read other people are monetizing a free blog, but I think that’s not practical.)

3. WordPress owns your site.

 

For example, you only own the content, but WordPress or the host site owns your entire blog.

Think of your blog as your house. You own the things inside the house. You own the house also because you build it. 

But since the lot where your house sits is not yours, then basically, if the landowner asks you to move away or leave, you have no choice but to do so. 

It’s the same thing online blogging and what we called hosting. When you blog, you need a space on the internet to put your content on. 

That’s where hosting services come in, like WordPress, BlueHost, Siteground, and many others. 

WordPress gives you a space in this world wide web through their servers to publish your blog. 

However, that also implies that you don’t own the space. It’s given to you to use under some terms and conditions. 

Unless you decide to pay for hosting services, then you don’t own your blog.

Still, if you just want to make a free WordPress blog to see if it’s something you’ll enjoy…

Or maybe use the free blog as a platform to practice your writing skills, then a free WordPress blog can do the job.

How to create a free WordPress blog?

So in this blog, I’ll give you the 16 super easy steps to start a blog today.

Again, these steps are only about how you can create a blog. 

Creating an excellent looking blog requires a lot of work. After setting up, you need to customize it, but this blog skips the customization part. 

If you want to customize your blog, I’ll try to make a video about it. Since it’s too long and a little bit complicated, writing won’t be enough to explain the process. 

While giving you the steps, you’ll also learn the different terms used in the blogosphere. 

Without any delay, let’s start! Here’s how to create a blog for free.

 

1. Go to WordPress.com and click Start your website. 

 

2. Enter your domain name. 

The domain name is your website name. 

For example, my domain name is MelanieBacelisco.com. 

You can choose any name you want, and you can change it later on as well. 

In this example, I use a domain name WriteForALiving. Click Continue afterward.

3. Choose a domain name.

On the next page, WordPress shows domain name suggestions.

We talked about a major downside of a free blog, and that is you can’t monetize it. 

If you want to create a blog for free and make money from it, you should go for premium or paid plans to get a custom domain and a hosting service. 

Let’s talk about customized domains for a sec. See these domains below?

The one with the word RECOMMENDED is a custom domain, and it’s a paid one. 

That means if you want a .com domain extension and your name as the domain or just any custom domain, you’ll have to pay for it. 

It’s not shown on this page yet, but you’ll see how much a paid domain is on the next pages.

Several other domain extensions exist out there, such as .net, .org, .ph, .uk, but the most commonly used is .com. 

But again, since we’re talking about how to make a free WordPress blog, the only option we have is the first choice that says FREE, with a series of annoying numbers.  

I know it’s an ugly site name, but let’s leave it at that for the sake of this lesson. 

The good thing is if, in the future, you want to upgrade to a custom domain, you can just change this ugly domain name. 

So select the FREE option and click Continue. 

 

4. Choose a theme.

You’ll see your domain name in the upper left and the design choices you can pick from on the next page. 

Choose the design or theme you want for your blog. 

Although you can change your blog’s theme, later on, it’s best if you have an idea in mind on how you like it to appear visually. 

One tip: There are thousands of WordPress blog examples you can model from. If you follow a blogger and you like the site’s overall design, you can choose something similar among the choices. 

So in this example, I chose the first one because it looks good to me. 

 

5. Pick your font style.

On to the next, you’ll be asked to pick a font style for your site. 

Now here’s one thing you should remember. When choosing a font, you need to put your readers in mind. 

Choose a font that’s simple and easy to read. Not something that looks like calligraphy fonts because they’d be difficult to read. 

The most common fonts used in sites are Verdana, Helvetica, Open Sans, and Arial. 

Again, choose a font that’s easy to read. 

I’ll choose Chivo/Open Sans here. Then hit Continue. 

 

6. Choose a plan.

Then, you’ll be asked to Choose a Plan.

So as you can see here, we have one free plan and several paid plans. 

If you notice, each paid plan comes with a free domain. 

That means, if you get a premium plan, you can get a custom domain with extensions like .com, .net, .ph, or any for free. 

It usually works this way with hosting providers. If you buy a hosting service, the hosting provider will offer a domain name for free.

Let’s go and choose the FREE Plan. Click the Choose button.

 

7. Voila! You finally set up your free WordPress blog.

Good job in getting here. Now, you see a lot of buttons here, but don’t be overwhelmed. 

This is how a website builder page looks from the backend. 

Now click the WordPress logo found at the upper left, and select My Home. 

The next page will look like this. 

 

8. Get familiar with the dashboard.

Now, this is what you call your Dashboard. 

You might get confused, but don’t worry, this is easy to understand. You’ll get familiar with the interface soon.

 

9. Next, click on Visit Site on the upper right. 

The next page is how your site looks in the eyes of your readers. Now, you want to customize it, so it looks better. So hit Customize on the lower right. 

This is where you can Customize your site.

These are additional steps to give an overview of what each part of the customization page is for.

 Extra Steps

10. If you go to Site Identity, it’s where you can change customize your logo, site title, and tagline. 

 

11. For Menus, it’s where you can customize your pages. As you can see, there’s only a Home and Blog page. You can add About, Contact, and other pages from it.

 

12. Under Homepage Settings, you can customize what the home page will look like. You can set your homepage to a static page or a blog post.

 

13. And last, there’s Additional CSS, which is only available for an upgraded version. 

It stands for cascading style sheet. It’s the technical side of programming, and for me, as a blogger, although there are templates, it’s essential to learn at least a few coding styles using HTML or hypertext markup language. 

The rest of the steps here is about customizing your site to make it look like you want.

Final Thoughts

Feel free to tweak your site depending on how you want it to be. That’s how you can create a free WordPress blog.

Unfortunately, customization is a different lesson. 

It’s basically where the rubber meets the road, so as I’ve mentioned, instead of writing, I plan to create a video about it, so please watch out for it. 

Once it’s done, I will post the link here. 

That’s it for today!

See you!