How to Start a Food Blog – Step by Step Guide

Want to start a food blog, but wondering from where to start? Don’t worry, here is the solution. Whether you want to start a cooking blog or want to become a successful food blogger, this article will help you in both cases.

Many people start their food blog just to combine their love for food and blogs as a place to share their best recipes. But it is very important to understand that blogging on different types of topics is executed in different ways.

Learn How to Start a Food Blog for Free

How to start a Cooking blog in easy steps

Sometimes it becomes difficult for blogger to decide whether they want to choose self hosted blog or the hosted one. There is a huge difference between the hosted and self hosted blogs as in case of hosted one. A company maintains your whole blog on its server, which frees you from the stress of backing up your data and site and updating your software regularly.

On the other hand, it is always better to start your own blog rather than sharing your content and recipes with other sites because over a period of time your blog can give you earning and appreciation from your readers and it will also develop your creative skills. So, if you share your recipes with a good photo, then many other bloggers might be willing to publish it, but in that case you will not get any monetary benefit of your effort and time.

But if you are very new in the blogging then you can use any hosted platform for some time and one of the best and most commonly used blogging platform is Blogger. This is a free platform for newbies and you can start your blog very easily with it. While using this platform you don’t have to worry about the website speed, hosting bills, or even maintenance of the website because google does all this for you and too absolutely free.

Below are some simple steps to learn how to start a blog and by following you can very easily start your own food blog in less than an hour.

1. Give your blog a name and buy a matching domain name

The first and the most important step of starting a food blog is to choose an appropriate name for your blog. You can choose a name which will describe your cooking style, background and lifestyle. An ideal blog name should be descriptive, memorable, short and easy to spell. Therefore, it is very important that your blog name should convey your cooking skills.

After deciding the name of your blog you have to buy a matching domain name for your food blog. Once you have some potential names in your mind for your new blog, you have to check their availability also. If you have planned to use Bluehost, then it has a handy domain name checking tool in which you just have to enter your desired domain name and after that click on check domain and it will quickly tell you that if your domain name is available or not.

2. Choose the best hosting plan

The second important step in starting your food blog is to choose the right and the best hosting plan for your blog. There are various hosting platforms easily available today out of which Bluehost for WordPress is the best. It is also available for free. Basically, hosting is like renting space on the internet to display your blog in front of others. The Bluehost comes with huge options and great rates which are suitable to almost everyone. Therefore, Bluehost is for beginners who want start with an affordable shared hosting plan that offers all things with just one click WordPress installation.

On the other hand, it also comes with a very quick data backup service. The Bluehost has one of the best customer service support which also helps newbies in dealing with various issues which comes up while starting a food blog. As discussed above, it offers a lot of packages to choose from but, since this is your first time it will be better for you to go with the starter plan because it is the cheapest plan available and also offers everything that you will ever need to start a food blog and that too including a free domain name.

Make sure that you choose a yearly plan as by paying on a yearly basis, you will save your lot of money.

3. Install WordPress

This is the most important step in which you have to install WordPress to start the working of your food blog. So, once you are done with the Bluehost registration, you have to go through the whole process of WordPress installation. Basically, WordPress is one of the commonly used blogging software and the best part is that it’s very easy to use and understand. You can easily install this by just following some simple and basic steps. It is one of the most convenient software used by almost all bloggers.

Therefore, if you are using Bluehost then, first log in the same and find the website builder section and after that just click on WordPress to install it for your new food blog. Once your installation is complete you will get a pop up message that your installation is complete. After this click on the view credential button and write your admin URL, password and username in the box. These credentials are just for the first time and you can very easily change them anytime.

You are almost done now. So once you are through with the WordPress installation, just go to settings-permalinks option page and change the permalink structure to your post name. Now click on the save button and you are ready to make your food blog look pretty.

4. Select a theme, design your blog and make it pretty

This is the most important step of your new food blog because looks and design will decide the future of your blog. So it is very important to choose the best theme for your blog which relates to your cooking style and can also attract your readers. WordPress comes with a vast variety of free themes from which you can choose the best one which suits your blog the most. But if you are really serious with your blog and planning to run it for a long time, then it is better that you go with premium themes of WordPress.

Selecting a good theme is important because it will only determine the whole look and feel of your blog. Now there are some important things to be kept in mind while choosing a theme for your blog and these are described as below:

1. The most important point while choosing a theme should be about its design. Its design should suit your blog and also offer the features you want.

2. The design of your theme should be very responsive. Basically, your design should be so responsive that it can provide an optimal viewing experience to your readers, whether they are reading your blog from their phone, computer or any other gadget. It should be according to the size which will be suitable for all types of modes.

3. Another important point to be kept in mind is that your theme should be very user friendly and for that you can find a theme that offers a built in design options because in that case you don’t have to edit codes to change the basic stuff. It will save your lot of time and energy.

4. Last but not the least is that choose a theme which has a great backup support so that you should not face any technical issues while working.

Once you are clear with what points to be kept in mind while choosing a theme, then just go ahead with selecting a theme for your food blog. Usually WordPress offers various free themes for newcomers. But there are some premium themes from WordPress which can take your food blog to another level. Some of the best ones are described as below:

1. The Genesis framework from Studiopress – This theme option is one of best and most commonly used by worldwide. It is also very responsive and easy to understand.

2. Foodie Theme – This theme is specially designed for the food blogs and most of the food bloggers tend to use this for their blogs. It also has an added option of which comes with a built in recipe page template and gives you more ideas for new recipes.

3. Food Blog Theme – This is another superb theme used by many food bloggers because it is beautifully designed, affordable, easy to use and has some unique options. It is cheap as compared to other premium theme options.

So, These are some of the commonly used themes for food blogs. You can choose the one which suits your needs the best and can design your blog easily. Now all the tough part is over and you are ready to write your first post. So, publish your first food blog now and keep in mind that you do not write too long posts in starting and always try to keep in touch with your readers. 🙂