Below is a list of what I did in the first week of Exploring Blogosphere. If you want to start a new WordPress blog and host it with your own domain name, you probably need to follow similar steps after the initial installation. 

• Be familiar with the WordPress dashboard, as it is the most frequently used blogging tool
• Install FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software so that you can upload/download files to the server much faster than using your hosting company’s panel
• Select a few favourite blog templates and upload them to the server so that you can change them when needed
• Install Google Sitemap so that your blog can be indexed faster
• Submit your URL to popular search engines like Google, Yahoo! AOL, etc.
• Register Feedburner, Technorati, MyBlogLog, etc., and install their widgets on the sidebar
• Add Ping services and submit your blog to as many as directories as you want
• Edit the About page to let readers know more about you and your blog
• Now, you’re ready to blog away 🙂

Did I miss anything critical? Please let me know if you have any suggestion. Thanks!

Fortunately, Exploring Blogosphere is back to normal since this morning. It seems that DreamHost has solved the site-slowness problem; however, I will continue to monitor the site. I will also start to figure out how to add some widgets such as site meter, RSS feed, MyBlogLog, etc. It’s a time consuming learning process – that’s one of reasons why I enjoy blogging 🙂

After comparing a few web hosting companies, I selected Dreamhost and registered a hosting account last Sunday. Dreamhost has good word of mouth based on my online research. However, from the very first second when I became their customer, the site loading speed was very slow – it takes more than 10s to respond to any request. I’ve submitted several support tickets asking them to fix this problem. It’s been 48 hours and the speed is still dead slow. I can’t do anything but wait.

Speed is the most important thing for any website. If they can’t solve the problem soon, I will leave for another hosting company.

I had no WordPress experience prior to this blog. I think it is a good idea to record my steps to develop this brand new WordPress blog, from registering a domain name , selecting a web hosting service, changing blog templates, installing plug-ins, etc. I hope this might benefit some Blogspot bloggers who are considering starting a WordPress blog but have fears of the unknown processes. What do you think?