By this point you have selected a topic; picked and registered a domain; and have created an account with a web hosting company. The next step is to set up your web site.

I'm a big fan of WordPress which free software that is used primarily for blogging, but can be modified to meet the needs of other types of web sites. WordPress is written in PHP, a fairly popular programming language for web sites. To store data, WordPress requires a MySQL database. Fortunately, MySQL is also free and included in many web hosting packages.

Your first step then is to follow the instructions provided by your web host to create a new MySQL database. As part of this process, you'll get a database name, database server name, administrator username, and administrator password. You'll need to keep these handy.

Once your database has been created, you should download WordPress. Unzip the file to a folder on your computer. There is one file that you'll need to edit which is called wp-config.php. In this file you'll need to type in the database name and server along with the administrator username and password. Once you've made these quick edits, upload all the WordPress files to the root folder of your web site. To upload files you'll need an FTP program. I use a free FTP program called FileZilla.

When all the files have been uploaded, open a browser window and go to www.yoursite.com/wp-install.php. You will be prompted for a few items and then you will be given the username and password you'll use to log in to WordPress to create and manage content.

Your first pass through these steps will likely take some time to get right. However, once you're familiar with the process, it can all be done in 10 to 15 minutes making it one of the easier steps in getting started with web publishing.