How To Create A Travel Blog – The Basics in 3 Quick Steps!

General Travel

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Have you been wondering about how to start a travel blog?  Or a blog about Food?  DIY? Home Decor?  

We take the challenging, mind-boggling job of starting a travel blog and break it down into 3 very easy to follow steps!

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*We are currently using all the products listed below and recommend them because we personally love the products.

A blog can serve many purposes, for some it is purely a place to have a creative outlet! For others, it is an extension of a business that they are trying to grow. 

You could easily have a blog focused around traveling with kids, or maybe around the best gear for travel, or simply go for a more general destination-style blog.

Whilst yet for others it is their full-time job that earns them a monthly income.  

Whatever your reason is for wanting to blog, whether it is because of personal reasons or for business, the basics of creating your own travel blog can be quick and pain-free to do! 

And we are going to walk you through how to do it!  How we did it. In only THREE easy-peasy steps!

Since we set up our blog we have had an extensive range of comments in regards to how ‘professional’ it looks and in all honesty it really wasn’t hard to achieve! 

I promise that if we could do it, so can you, but if you prefer, you can also take a more hand-held approach and do it with the help of an online travel blogging course!! 

The money that was spent on start-up costs:

  • Registration of domain .com.au with CrazyDomain – US $8.50 or AUD $11.50 (2 year registration) – (NOTE: Bluehost offers free domain names for the more common domain name endings such as .com)
  •  Hosting package with Bluehost – US $3.95 p/m or AUD $3.35 p/m
  • Purchase of WordPress theme from Mojo Themes – US $49 or AUD $64.40 (NOTE: there are heaps of FREE themes for you to choose from – you do not need to purchase a theme)

Today is your day to create your own travel blog!  If you have been thinking about it, why not give it a go?  What have you got to lose?

Simply follow these easy steps below and you will have your own blog up and running in no time at all!

HOW TO START A TRAVEL BLOG

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THREE EASY PEASY STEPS TO SET UP A TRAVEL BLOG:

  1. Domain Name and Hosting
  2. Installing WordPress (The best blogging platform)
  3. Making it look AMAZING!!

1. DOMAIN NAME AND HOSTING

Picking your domain name can be loads of fun, it can also be challenging and frustrating and tricky!  Before you pick your domain name, you need to make sure that you are totally head over heels in love with the name of your blog.  So don’t rush it, think about it and see how your name feels to you over the next few days!  I think we ran through at least 10 different options before finding something that just simply felt like the perfect match!

After some more ideas and tips on how to choose the right name for your new travel blog?  Here is a great ‘start a travel blog’ guide that walks through some common mistakes to avoid!

Once you find the name that makes your heart happy, check to see if your domain name is available in the box below.  This may take a few tries, as there are already over 354 million domain names registered to other people!  Don’t worry, if your name has already been taken, you can play with some variants.  The most popular web addresses end in .com, so start by searching for  —->  www.(thenameofyourblog).com.  If that one is taken, you can try your name with different endings such as .net.  The beauty of finding your available name in the box below means that you can register it with Bluehost FOR FREE!!!  They offer free registration of domain names as part of their package, which saves you money!

* If you are prepared to pay for a specific domain name that Bluehost doesn’t offer, such as with our site www.wanderluststorytellers.com.au  (they don’t offer .com.au and .com with our name was already taken) then consider paying for that domain through a site such as Crazy Domains

If your blog is part of your ‘brand’ it might be important to also check that your name is available on social media sites, you can easily do that with this site here: namechk.com

For hosting, we recommend that you host your blog with Bluehost.  You don’t have to host your blog with a provider, you can get a free blog from wordpress.org, however, a blog that is hosted not only looks more professional, but it also allows you more freedom in customizing your blog as well as being able to perform more functions.  In our opinion, the small costs per month are worth the benefits you receive!

Tip: Should you like to compare hosting platforms and/or read individual reviews for available hosting in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Singapore or Malaysia, Hosting Foundry reviews all the best ones that you can find.

Why choose Bluehost?

We invested a lot of time researching the web to choose a host that met our needs.  It wasn’t an easy job and it took loads of hours of researching!

  • Bluehost is one of the most popular hosting platforms for bloggers, which means that they have experience with working with wordpress.org blogs and can therefore help you if anything goes wrong!
  • They offer FREE domain name registration, saving you even more money – gotta love amazing deals!!
  • When things go wrong, Bluehost is incredibly easy to reach in order to get support.  We have contacted them with the 24/7 livechat option on a few occasions and generally get help within 5 minutes, we have also called them …. all the way from Australia and got through within no-time at all.  They have always been able to solve our issues promptly.
  • They offer a money-back guarantee.  If you don’t love them, you can ditch them!
  • They are reliable, have good reviews, there are no hidden costs and you can trust that your blog is safe in their hands!

Hop over to Bluehost now, click on the ‘Get Started Now’ button and choose a plan, we suggest the Starter Plan, which is paid in one lump sum instead of monthly, but it’ll save you quite a bit of cash in the long run.

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In the next step, you will be asked to register for either a free domain name or to enter the domain name you purchased elsewhere.

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Next, enter your account information and select your package information.

Below is a screenshot of what we used for the package information settings.  We recommend selecting the ‘Domain Privacy Protection’ to keep your personal address and phone number associated with your domain name blocked to the public eye.  We all love a bit of privacy right?

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 2. INSTALLING WORDPRESS

Congratulations, the first step is complete!!

Next step involves installing WordPress – this is your blogging software.  Luckily Bluehost has made this progress super easy!!  It’s all automatic!

Login to Bluehost and on your homepage, scroll down until you find the ‘Website’ section, click on the ‘Install WordPress’ option here.

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On the next page click the “Install” button in the “Do it yourself (FREE)” section.

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On the next page, you will be asked to choose which domain you want to install it to, click the “Check Domain” button.

Check the terms and conditions box and then click the “Install Now” button.

This will take a little bit of time, but once you get the message that says “Your install is complete!”, click on the  “View Credentials” button at the top of the page and write down your Admin URL, Username, and Password.

Enter your Admin URL into your web browser and in the WordPress login screen, enter the username and password that you just wrote down!  Voila!!  You now have a blog!!!

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3. MAKING YOUR NEW TRAVEL BLOG LOOK AMAZING!

This is the login screen that you will need to login to when you go and write your blog posts and where you go to make your blog pretty, so it will be important to ‘get-to-know’ this panel, and it might take a bit of time to work it all out.  For now, it is time to fiddle on designs and ‘plug-ins’ to make your blog pretty before you even think about starting your first blog post.  It is important to create a blog now that you absolutely love because if you switch themes later, it is common for things to ‘get lost’ or for things to go wrong. So make sure you love your blog.

Themes:  WordPress has tons of free WordPress themes to pick from. You can have a browse through the free options here.  However if you like to be a bit more unique than most, and if you like certain ‘features’ it might be worth looking at investing in a bought theme.

The Highend Theme – This is the theme we are currently using it.  This premium theme is excellent value for money as you get dozens of different ‘looks’ in one, meaning you can customize your look to your heart’s content.  The theme comes will all sorts of yummy extras.  We love our theme!  And we love the forum support you can get at HB-themes as they have helped us heaps with solutions to personalize our theme to create the look we wanted!  – US $49 or AUD $66.40.  You can also browse through hundreds of themes from the Mojo Marketplace to find a different theme that grabs your interest.

Plugins:  Plugins are little shortcut type programs to allow you to do things more easily.  They can be quite addictive, but be careful about installing too many unnecessarily as they can slow down your site.  Once logged in, look for the ‘Plugins’ in the menu.  If you bought a theme, you might already have some plugins installed here, if not, go ahead and add some new plugins.  ‘Jetpack’ is a popular plugin and ‘Akismet’ is great to help avoid spammy comments.  ‘Yoast SEO’ is beautiful for optimizing search engine keywords and ‘Pinterest Pin It Button’ will allow all your images to become pinterest-able.  (yes, I just made that word up!)  Browse through some of the plugins and have fun!!!

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LASTLY

Don’t forget, you do not have to pay a cent to become a blogger, if you simply want to experiment with a blog as a hobby, you can sign up through WordPress.org to get the basic features of the blogging world.  You simply can’t go wrong with setting up a free travel blog! Enjoy the journey!!

Leave us a link to your blog in the comments below so we can come and check it out!!

Photo of author

Jolene Ejmont

Originally from South Africa, now living in Australia, Jolene is a wife and a mother to three beautiful daughters. Together with her family, she is embarking on a journey towards changing her current stress-filled life to one focusing on her dreams and her passion for travel. She wants to share her stories in the hope to inspire you to chase your own dreams!

9 thoughts on “How To Create A Travel Blog – The Basics in 3 Quick Steps!”

  1. Thanks guys. It’s good to get recommendations. I signed up with Bluehost and am on my way getting my website together.

    One thing I didn’t know was that all your information is out in the www. I was so angry when I found out that my address and phone number was published, after someone rang from India. I had to pay Bluehost to take it down.

    • Hi Di, shame to hear that! It is so hard to protect yourself on the internet! We got a phone call too, but just blocked their number on our phones and never had any issues since!

  2. Hello, I am Margarita and just started my new blog which I want to combined with travel coaching business. The blog is only party about travelling but the mission behind it is to encourage people to make changes in their life they fear to make and also inspire them to travel.
    I would love you to take a look at it and give me your feedback. Thank you so much. Margarita

  3. Thanks for these easy to follow steps! I got my blog set up within no time at all! Now to play and make it look all pretty! So excited!

  4. I really appreciate you putting up this guide to help aspiring bloggers, such as myself. Thank you!

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