How to start your own website or blog

Don’t ask me.  Ask Matthew Stibbe of the Bad Language blog. 

Last week he wrote a wonderful guide on How to get your own domain name, website and email address: 

People often ask me to help them create a website. In the past I’ve tended to do all the work for them but this is getting increasingly time-consuming so I’ve put together this DIY guide to:

• Buying your own domain name
• Building a simple WordPress website [or blog]
• Setting up email and web forwarding

My objective is to let people get their own ‘proper’ email and website address without having to pay a lot of money for hosting - just the cost of registering the domain itself.

For further reading he recommends WordPress for Dummies, although you can probably get by with just his article. 

Remember that Matthew Stibbe is an expert. If you want advice from someone at the self-taught-the-hard-way end of things, you might ask John of NB Alacrity.  He seems to have taken this same route to getting his blog going - including buying the book - so would be a useful second opinion.