How To Start Your Own Food Blog In 15 Minutes?
On Jan 1st, 2015, Foodviva.com completed 3 years and in these 3 years it has grown from meager 100 page views a month to 1.5 million (15 lac) page views per month and it’s growing faster than ever. With its continued growth and stable earnings, my husband and I are now convinced that food blogging can generate a significant amount of side income and can potentially become a main source of income in future. So if you are a good cook (like I am), love to share your creations to you friends, family and to everyone, have little bit of free time, you too can start a food blog in less than 15 minutes and make your presence felt on this virtual world.
It doesn’t take a fortune or huge effort to start a blog; what it requires is next 15 minutes of your time and little bit of willingness. So let’s get started!
Three Essential Steps For Starting A Food Blog:
Step-1: Domain Name and Hosting
This part is simple and it’s very similar to buying stuffs from your favorite website on Internet. First of all, you need to find/brainstorm few suitable domain name for your food blog (it is a name that you would like to give to your website; e.g. domain name for this blog is foodviva.com)
Few tips for choosing domain name for food blog:
- Select a .com whenever possible.
- Should be short (5 to 15 characters), easy to pronounce and spell.
- Avoid hyphens and numbers.
- Avoid strings having multiple words in it.
- Try to select a name that is indicative of the topic of blog.
- Be creative and try to keep name that is timeless and can be a good Brand Name.
- Read more tips for choosing right domain name, if needed.
Once you have shortlisted and prioritized few names, go to Bluehost* and check if it’s available by entering it in the “new domain” box and click next.
Once you find the domain name that is available, it will ask you to select a hosting plan similar to one displayed below.
To start a food blog, domain name needs to be hosted somewhere. Hosting is similar to renting space on the web in which you can store your recipes, food articles, photos, etc., and display it to your visitors. Bluehost generally has good deals going on all the time and gives you your domain name for free if you decide to host with them (this would save you approx. 15$ in domain name registration fees right away).
I recommend choosing “Starter Plan” since it provides sufficient server space and capacity to start a food blog and serve few hundred pages a day while you are working on building the content for your blog. Also by paying in lump sum you will get cheaper rate, save quite a bit of cash and do not need to worry about monthly payments.
On a sign up page, provide details in account information (please make sure to provide valid email id since this is the email id to which your account details will be sent after successful sign-up).
In “Package Information” section, select appropriate “Account Plan” (The longer the plan you select the lesser cost per month.) and “Domain Privacy Protection” and keep all other options unselected as shown in the screenshot below. Domain Whois privacy protection prevents your personal address and phone information from being displayed on public Whois information – this is not required but recommended. Note: If you are using your existing domain name then “Domain Privacy Protection” option will not be available for you.
Fill the payment details and click next. Now it will show you some options for upgrade, just ignore them and complete the payment; it will show you a “welcome to bluehost” message and ask for setting up the password for your new hosting account.
Accept Terms and Conditions and type the password, click on “Create” and login to your account with newly created password. Tip: Note the user name – it would be same as your domain name. It would also send you an email with your new Bluehost account info and login details. Please preserve this email for future reference.
Step-2: WordPress Installation
Now you’ll need to go through the process of installing WordPress. It is a content management system (CMS) and a blogging software that provides all necessary tools and features to run a blog without need of any technical know-how. Foodviva.com also uses the WordPress and installing it is super simple and requires just few clicks.
Go to bluehost.com, click on login link available on top right corner. On next page, type your credentials and login to your newly created account. It may show upsell message for helping you get started, click “I can do it” (why should you pay them when you can do it yourself for free in just 5 minutes by following this guide?)
Go to the “Website” section on the home page and click on WordPress logo.
On next page, it will show you the latest WordPress version. Click on “Install”.
On next page, select domain, keep “Directory” box empty and click on “Check Domain”
On next page, select “I have read the terms and conditions of the GPLv2” and click on “Install Now”. It will start the WordPress installation and show the progress on the top of the page. Once it is complete, it will show “Your Install is Complete” message.Click on “View Credentials”
Click on “View” to see the URLs and credentials of your new WordPress installation.
Note down
URL – this is the name of your new blog.
Admin URL – this is the URL you would use to configure and manage your blog.
Username and Password – these are the credentials that you would use to log in to your WordPress Admin console.
At this point your shining new food blog is now live and if you go to the URL, it will show a web page similar one given below.
Now let’s log in to WordPress Admin Console to activate the blog. Type Admin URL and you will see page similar to this.
Sign in with your credentials noted in previous step and you will see a message similar to one given below and click on “click here”
You will see a message similar to
Click on the “click here” or type URL in browser to see your brand new web page of the blog. You will see webpage similar to one given below with default “My Site” blog title, “Just another WordPress Site” tag line and “Hello world!” blog post.
WooHoo! Your own personal blog is live now! Exciting! Isn’t it? Click around and play with your new website.
You’re now just a few minutes away from sharing your first recipe to your friends, family and world! However, before you jump onto it, let’s give your food blog a custom touch and make it little beautiful and adorable!
Step-3: Making It Look Beautiful
Now lets work on giving it a desired look and feel. It can be easily achieved by three different ways; Free WordPress themes, paid premium WordPress themes or custom WordPress Themes developed only for your website. WordPress has tons of free WordPress themes and you can browse through the options here and if you want to have more professional looking blog that works on most of the browsers then I recommend following premium themes (choose one that you like).
The Solostream Themes – Foodviva.com is using Solostream’s WP-Clear theme. We love it because of its neat and clean minimalist design that also allows displaying various ads to monetize your blog without impacting customer experience. The other good thing about it is that it allows you to buy single theme at a cheaper price. So if your heart is set on one particular theme then why pay more! We highly recommend it.
The Genesis Framework – This the best of the best premium theme that is SEO friendly, adheres to WordPress security standards and optimized for mobiles and speed. Among all StudioPress themes, we especially like Foodie Pro theme that is tailor made for food blogs. Note: We are not using it currently but had evaluated it few months back when we were considering upgrading to new look and feel.
Elegant Themes – these themes looks great, are easy to customize and provides quite a few different options. The best thing about it is that it allows you to try all of their 85+ themes with a single price and it’s a little bit cheaper than Genesis Framework.
See our guide on basic things to look for while selecting a WordPress Theme and recommended themes for food blogs.
How to Install My New WordPress Theme?
Once you finalize your theme and have downloaded its .zip file, Go to Dashboard -> Appearance -> Themes.
On next window click on “Add New”.
Click on “Choose File”, select theme’s zip file and then click on “Install Now”
Go to Dashboard -> Appearance -> Themes and you will see your newly installed theme there. Hover mouse over it and click on “Activate”. This will change your blogs look and feel to new a theme.
Ok, I have my personal food blog, now what?
Now it’s time to write your first recipe of food article. However, before that, we recommend that you complete these 6 essential WordPress configurations to secure your blog and make it user and SEO friendly.
*Disclaimer: Please note that some of the links are affiliate links in this post and we will earn a commission if you purchase through those links.