Setting up this blog was time consuming. I feel that I can attribute this to several factors such as:

1. My desire to go ‘all the way’ – getting all the social bookmarking set up.
2. Not knowing exactly how to do step 1.

I listed exactly – well almost exactly – what I had to do to set up the blog, and how much time every step took.

Below is the spreadsheet with the time I spent for every task. I use Google Docs for the following spreadsheet because it is so easy to include in my WordPress posts. The only problem is that the text formatting in the spreadsheet is simplified, so I am unable to get the same quality formatting as the WordPress editor (such as italics, hyperlinks, and/or bullets). I used some letters for these tasks (in the spreadsheet) so I can describe them below.

Article Time Report 2

In other words… I spent more than 11 hours setting up this blog and writing this article! Almost 9 hours were dedicated to building the blog. That is pretty crazy. My words per minute rate for this blog post is 15.7, which is quite a jump from the previous post, Starting from Zip.

Details

A

Setup Google Apps (To get email with startingfromzip.com domain, Google Docs and other apps):

• Registered user name/password
• Verified domain
• Setup Gmail (Changed mx entries)
• Added apps (MailChimp, Mavenlink)

B

Setup Google Analytics

• Installed Google Analytics for WordPress plugin

C

Changed a little more of the settings around using Glenn Allsopp’s free report How to Build a Blog with 10,000+ Subscribers (get it and read steps on page 22) as a guideline.

Just a note: The www 301 redirect took about an hour to add (because of lack of experience). Before implementing the 301 redirect, the 302 redirect in WordPress must be active. If you don’t do this, your browser will get stuck in an infinite loop. In other words, your server will load the www version, WordPress will load the non-www version, your server will load the www version, and this will keep going until either you or your browser will stop the load process.

To add the 302 redirect to your WordPress blog, in Dashboard click Settings ->General. Add a www to your address on lines 3 and 4 (if you want your website to have a www).

Check out Glenn’s report here to get an idea of why a 301 redirect is important and when/how/why it should be implemented.

D

Fixed a WordPress error – All posts were showing up as page not found.

At this point, I finally published my first blog post. The only problem was that when I tried to open it, a page not found  page showed up – probably because I edited the .htaccess file.

The solution to this problem: WordPress “Not found” Error Fix.

E 

I searched for the best social bookmarking plugin – the easiest to implement. I added and tried both Simple Social Bookmarks and Social Slider. Social Slider was the easiest to use. It has a form where you can add each of your social profile addresses. The plugin did all the work for me. After I pressed Save under the form, all of the bookmarks I added appeared on the left of the screen.

I deactivated and removed Simple Social Bookmarks to keep my blog’s plugin list clean and organized.

F

I installed and set up the WP Soul theme. I found the theme by watching Pat Flynn’s video How to Build a Blog in Less than 4 Minutes and Write Your First Blog Post (YouTube link), or a direct link, Smart Passive Income How to Videos.

G

Joined Po.st (http://www.po.st). After looking into the details I decided not to use it for this blog.

H

I read some of WordPress: The Complete Post Install Checklist. While some of the article is still relevant, it was published in January of 2007 and all of the advice should be taken with a grain of salt.

For instance, allowing anyone to become a member of your blog so they can subscribe may open your blog up to attacks by spammers.

I also added the Disqus plugin which adds the cool comment form below.

I

Investigated how to create a Facebook landing page of the Smart Passive Income How to Videos page. After watching the video, I registered a business page on Facebook and found it to be in the timeline format. Such a shame! The older format is key to building a cool Pat Flynn landing page.

J

I signed up for the following services/social websites.

• RSS Feed Burner
• Google+
• MailChimp – decided to opt out of this service. They require an actual address on all outgoing email.
• YouTube
• Requested Invite on Pinterest
• LinkedIn

Conclusion

I have learned a lot from writing this article. It took a lot of time to add all of these services and addons to the blog. Many of the services are not even needed to get the blog rolling. I registered for many different social websites such as LinkedIn and Pinterest, but at the moment they are ‘blank’. I did not add my data or spice them up at all. I probably won’t even use my new Twitter account until I get a few more blog posts up.

In retrospect, I could have better spent much of this time developing my goals and figuring out how to achieve them.

If I build another blog, the only reason why I would register for these social websites is to claim the user names. This is part of the brand building aspect of blogging. There is no reason to be a member of these websites. I do not have much to talk about on them (yet), and my time is extremely limited so it takes several days to write one blog post (as you can see in the above spreadsheet). I am still very new to writing, blogging, websites, and helping others online. When I get the hang of this blog and start working toward several goals, I may start using Twitter and the other social websites.

The most important features I added to this blog are the Google tools such as Apps, Analytics, and Rss FeedBurner, Akismet, and Disqus. The others are other great additions, but not as important.

I hope this post can help you in your blog building endeavor.

So… what do you think? Did it take this long for you to set up your blog? What do you think are the most important addons?