Want to make your own photography blog? Use WordPress – it’s a user-friendly content management system that has powered up to 34% of the internet. With its vast collection of themes and plugins for blogs, you can customize your blog however you want.
This guide will help you in starting a photography blog with WordPress from scratch. Follow the steps below, and your blog will be ready in no time!
1. Determine Your Niche
Before creating your blog, you have to define the content you want to make.
There are many types of photography blogs. You can start a travel photo-diary, write tutorials, or review new gadgets. Sticking to one niche is not compulsory – however, specifying it can help in finding your audience.
2. Choose a Hosting Service and a Domain
To use WordPress, you will need a web host. Read this article to guide your search for the right hosting provider. Make sure it offers WordPress one-click installation for easy setup.
Next, pick a domain name. Some people like to use their own name for their personal photography blog. However, if your main content is tutorials, reviews, or news about photography, consider getting creative.
Make sure your domain name reflects your brand. Also, pick one that is short and catchy. There are tools that can help you generate your blog name if you are ever stuck.
Finish setting up your hosting and domain to move on to the next step.
3. Install WordPress
Now you can install WordPress from your host’s control panel. For instance, if you use Hostinger, you can use the Auto-Installer in cPanel and select WordPress from the content management options.
Generally, you have to fill in the following details: domain name, administrator username, password and email, language, website title, and tagline. Then click Install. Finally, log in to your WordPress website and finish setting it up.
4. Build Your Website
It’s time to create your photography blog. Here are some steps to get started.
Decide the Pages You Need
Generally, a basic blog has a homepage, an About page, and a Contact page.
A typical homepage would be filled with the blog’s recent posts. However, many websites are making their homepage and blog page separate.
You can use the homepage as a brief description of what your blog’s about and why visitors should keep reading. Also, include a navigation bar for visitors to explore your pages.
The About page is where you can tell your visitors who you are and what the blog is for.
For the Contact page, insert your business email address or a contact form for visitors to reach you.
You can add as many pages as you need. For instance, if you sell prints, include a Products page as well.
Design the Appearance
Since photography is a visual medium, it’s best to pick design elements that complement images.
For the theme, find one that highlights your pictures. You should review a theme carefully before using it.
For example, if you use the BPF theme, use the large image mode on your blog. Here, you can set a featured image on top of your blog post. The picture will show up on your blog page above the post title.
If you want a larger featured image, choose the List Style 1 mode from the TheJ theme. The pictures are nearly full-width, perfect for displaying high-quality photos.
Since your blog will feature plenty of images, it’d be useful to create galleries. The easiest way is by installing a gallery plugin.
Use it to display many images at once so that visitors can go through them easily. Depending on the plugin’s capability, it can be placed on a post, a page, or other components of your website.
However, there are many themes that are already made to display photos and galleries beautifully without using a plugin. You can find and research about WordPress Photography themes to save your time.
Install Plugins for Optimization
Plugins are also necessary for extending your website’s functionality. You can use them to maximize your blog’s performance.
The plugins you need will depend on the type of blog you’re creating. In general, here are the types of plugins you should have:
- Image Compression – large images can slow down your page load time. So, use a plugin that reduces the file sizes while also not compromising their quality. See the image optimization guide and plugins review here.
- Contact Form – your visitors will have an easier time sending you inquiries if you install a contact form plugin.
- Social Sharing – you can boost traffic through social media shares through plugins.
- SEO – use plugins that can improve your website and page ranking on search engines.
- Security – protect your site from threats and vulnerabilities with security plugins.
Don’t Stop Here
As you can see, creating a photography blog on WordPress isn’t that difficult. However, this is just a start to your online journey. Managing a website can be as challenging as much as it is rewarding. But with perseverance, anything is possible. Good luck!