How to run your own WordPress blog with BlueHost
- October 22, 2021
A few months ago, I was getting in touch with Bluehost, the hosting company I had worked with for years.
I was in the process of building a blog and had a few new things I wanted to share.
It was time for me to give BlueHost a shot.
The first thing I wanted was a WordPress site.
I had worked for several years with WordPress, but it was never quite the right fit for my personal tastes.
I’d always been interested in blogging for fun, but I’d never quite found it satisfying.
I needed something a little more substantial.
It’s a long-time passion of mine, and I was determined to take it to the next level.
With BlueHost, I had a site that would run on my Mac, iPad, and PC.
It wouldn’t take up too much space.
It could be hosted on my private network.
It would be fast.
It’d be secure.
And it’d be responsive.
A few weeks later, BlueHost sent me a free trial package.
In the end, I went with it.
There were a few things that I didn’t like.
For one thing, Bluehost had a free 30-day trial, but not all of them.
Another thing I didn´t like was the idea of having to sign up to BlueHost.
What I wanted more than anything was the opportunity to learn and grow from my experience with WordPress.
It was the first time I’d ever had to deal with the whole WordPress experience.
On top of that, I’d already been using WordPress for a few years and didn’t want to go back to it.
So, for the most part, I didn�t care.
That all changed one day when BlueHost offered me an early version of their WordPress 4.4.5 installer.
My initial reaction to this was that I should give it a try.
BlueHost was offering a free upgrade, which was great.
But the next thing I realized was that the install didn’t actually work.
Well, not entirely.
This was actually a fairly common issue.
While I was downloading the installer, I found a few problems that seemed to indicate the installer was not completely installed and could be fixed.
So I took my time and tried to work through the issues.
Once I was done, I tried to install the installer again.
Then, once I had it working, I decided that I would give Bluehost a shot and see if it was really worth the risk.
To be honest, I couldn’t have known that would be the case.
After installing the installer and trying to set it up, I knew I had something I was happy with.
And I wasn’t disappointed.
When I went to the BlueHost website, I got the same results.
Unfortunately, I ran into some problems.
One of them was a limitation with the theme options.
You could choose between two themes, but one theme would be default and the other would be fully featured.
(This was a very common problem for me.)
I also couldn’t choose which themes would be included with the installer.
I could choose which files I wanted included with it, but that was really annoying.
If you download the files separately, it’s a fairly simple process to set them up in WordPress.
It only takes a few minutes.
Somehow, the theme files I downloaded were missing.
At first, I thought it was some sort of security issue, but the theme folder was actually not on my system.
Still, I did want to try it out.
Because I had just installed WordPress 4 and had only a few files to test, I opted to download the whole thing.
Of course, I could not have downloaded it from the Bluehost website.
Fortunately, the download was easy.
Since I was not expecting to download it directly from the installer I downloaded it manually.
As it turned out, the installer didn’t allow me to upload any files from my local computer to the installation directory.
Now, I wasn´t entirely certain that I was going to be able to install a theme.
Luckily, I stumbled across a page on WordPress which showed how to install multiple themes.
However, it was very confusing and took me a while to figure out what each theme did.
Before I knew it, I would be downloading the entire theme.
So, what could I do to fix this?
One thing I had to do was set up an empty directory in my home directory.
This was so I could create a temporary directory where I could place my themes.
(I had a good backup of my WordPress installation and could always back up to it if something went wrong.)
The second thing I needed to do now was install the WordPress installer. (It was a
