I’ve written in the past about how great I think GMail is as an online app. I still think it’s better than most, if not all mail clients I’ve ever used (I’m currently on the beta of Sparrow which is my favourite Mail app for Mac, so far).

I’ve been asked in the past to help set up several people set-up online “presences”. A simple blog site and email with their own domain name – something that looks at least semi-professional.

At the risk of giving away all my knowledge for free, here’s how I have myself (and several other people) set up. All for less than you might think.

I highly recommend TSOHost for these steps. They can register your domain for you, add the hosting, support Google Apps, and their help desk is open all the time (despite what it says on their site!)

Step 1. Register your domain

You need to think of something simple and unique, like http://www.robmac.net. Go to TSO Host and start checking availability. But before you register, you should consider hosting – in Step 2…

Step 2. Add hosting

Hosting is basically leasing space on someone elses server for your files – the posts, pictures, videos that will be on your site. TSO offer a basic package for a couple of quid a month.

If you set up your hosting and domain at the same time with TSO, it can save a lot of time.

I would very much recommend purchasing Linux hosting, over Windows hosting. It just works better – especially with WordPress.

Step 3. Set up WordPress

You need to download the latest version of WordPress from wordpress.org, then upload it to your new hosting area.

In order to do this you will need an FTP client. On Mac OS X, I recommend Transmit from Panic. The last FTP program I used on Windows was WS_FTP, it always seemed very reliable.

So you need to pull three pieces of information from your TSOHost hosting setup email. Domain name, username and password.

Open up your FTP client and enter that infomation as it requests it. Here’s a screenshot of Transmit:

Once you’re logged into your hosting account via FTP, you’ll be presented with a folder structure. TSO make it easy with a shortcut folder called WWW. If not, your folder may be called httpdocs. Navigate into this folder, and you’ll find your website root. This is where the browser is pointed to when your domain is visited. The default page is typically called index.html or index.htm. When you browse to www.whatever.com the first page that comes up will be this index page. Similarly, if you make a folder and place an index.html file inside it, when you browse to www.whatever.com/folder/ you will be presented with that index.html file, and so on.

If your brain is starting to steam up now, don’t worry – most of the hard work is almost done.

In your FTP client, make yourself a folder called wordpress, and browse into it. Then, drag your wordpress installation into the folder. The entire contents of the zip file that you downloaded earlier from WordPress.org.

Cool! That was easy, right?

There’s one more complicated thing to do. You need to set up a database for WordPress to interact with. You may want to contact your host for help with this, as every hosting solution manages this bit differently. But if they’re using CPanel, like TSO Host, here’s how to do it.

CPanel is a handy piece of software that helps you manage all sorts of services running on your hosting account through an easy to understand graphical interface. And here it is:

We’re going to set up a blank database and user, then simply feed in the details into the WordPress installation we have uploaded.

Under “MySQL Databases” (you can use the search field to find this if you like), you can set up a unique database name – which will probably start with your domainname followed by the name you choose (note, I’ve smudged out my default for security reasons):

Once you’ve hit “Create Database”, scroll down the same page and make a user:

And finally, associate that user with the database at the bottom of the page.

Make a note of these details (database name, user name and password) and then navigate to the wordpress install we uploaded earlier. So http://www.whatever.com/wordpress

You will be taken through a series of steps, including this window:

Don’t forget to use the full database names and usernames (e.g. whatever_username etc…)

That’s it! Your own WordPress service is now set up.

Step 4. Skinning your Site

Depending on your level of design knowledge / ability you may already have a design in mind, or you may want to have one pre-made for you. You can find Themes through the WordPress Theme Page, or there are a number of paid-for theme services such as ThemeForrest. In my experience, the paid-for themes are definitely worth the investment. They often have a lot of easy customisation options, so you can make your page look your own without touching a single line of code.

Step 5. Running your E-Mail through GMail

This is a fairly easy process, which is written up very well by Google themselves. Suffice it to say, there is a great service called Google Apps Standard Edition, which lets you run Google Mail, Docs, Videos etc. from your own domain – you simply need to point your mail server at Google. This involves a little bit of monkeying about in CPanel, and that’s about it :)

Here’s the sign-up for Google Apps which will get you started.

So now you have your own custom-made blog / web site with custom email and a load of storage for less than £40 a year! :) Well done!