Blogging platform for novice

Ok. How do I go about establishing and using Word Press and using Mars Edit to organize my blog input?

I have Mars Edit in Setapp and I am familiar with it basically (I’d surmise) as I used it several years ago. It was a cinch.

Self-hosted WordPress or WordPress.com?

If it’s WordPress.com, you should be able to set up everything right on their site.

If you’re looking for self-hosted, both BlueHost and SiteGround offer 1-click WordPress installs and decent support.

And on the off chance you’re looking at doing the thing where you spin up a VPS to run your own WordPress site, that’s beyond the scope of a forum answer. :wink:

ok. Thanks. But how do I incorporate Mars Edit into it?
:smiley:

Is it expensive?

Just opened Mars Edit. The app know what to do!

As long as you already own MarsEdit, you just tell it that you want to set up a site. Give it your web address, your WP username/password, and anything else it asks you for.

Once you’ve done that, MarsEdit uses a neat tool called “XML-RPC” to post and get posts from your blog. Basically, MarsEdit loads up a special web address, logs in, and sends your post over.

It’s super-slick. :slight_smile:

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Wonderful, Web! My anxiety about it has totally dissipated! Thank you!

FYI everyone, as mentioned in the other thread. I have decided to set up a wordpress.org hosting with Dreamhost for now. I may migrant to another hosting service depending on cost.

Setting installing the wordpress and plug in not hard at all. I did that all in one morning. It is not pretty but at least functional. I shall keep on doing continuous enhancement

This is my blog site fuzzygel.com . Appreciate your review and feedback

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I have recently gone from paying for hosting to a simple approach of using Google Domains then linking to Google Sites and Blogger. The total cost is less than $20 AUD per year, basically, you just pay for the Domain name.

Both sites offer enough control over the HTML etc to make attractive and functional websites. Google branding is easy to remove.

You can also set up Gmail to receive and send your Domain email.

Sounds like this can be your next blogpost @logic2design

Good idea, I will get onto that

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I would urge you to install the free WordFence security plugin.

That, and make sure to figure out how backups work. :slight_smile:

thanks both. I got the backup working but now installed WordFence. I guess the free version should be sufficient?

Free is fine. If you ever start blogging for a living you may want to pony up for the paid version. :slight_smile:

Yep, unless you’re making money or have a lot of traffic, the free version is fine.

There are lots of hosts that provide backup services, backing up your MySQL or other database, etc. but also, regularly export your posts via the WP Tools option. If you use SFTP, occasionally grab a copy of your Media directory, too.

The MySQL backup is much more effective, but I’m an adherent of the multiple redundant backups religion.

thanks @Medievalist . Just checking… I am using Ulysses to post to my blog. Do I still need to maintain a backup from WP? Wouldn’t Ulysses saves a backup set on iCloud already? A question from the blog rookie

Any host that does cPanel will also be able to generate a “full account backup”, which is just what it sounds like. That backup can actually be used to move everything to a new provider.

Useful to have those done occasionally. :slight_smile:

Ulysses will have the content, yes, but one of the advantages of the WordPress export is that it’s fairly trivial to import your content to another platform/CMS/blogging system.

I’m keen to see how easy this is. I wanted to use Ulysses to post to WP but as I have a business acct, it doesn’t work (effectively) Unless someone here knows something I don’t (which, you will likely know, is 99% possible!) :joy:

what issue are you facing? Posting from Ulysses (at least on personal account) is very straightforward, you just need to know the log in details

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It’s straightforward … until it isn’t.

Ulysses logs in to WordPress using xml-rpc. Some hosting providers block that login channel for security reasons.