If you are passionate about human rights and social justice you may have considered to launch a human rights blog. Blogs are a great way to draw attention to an issue, raise awareness for a cause and engage new supporters. Website Builders like Jimdo and Weebly make it easy for everyone to launch their blog within minutes. But with a little extra effort you can launch a professional and ecofriendly website with far more options for customizations. This quick guide will explain how you can use the same system that Human Rights Careers is based on. You can even add your own donation system to your blog and ask your readers to support you. Here are the five steps you need to take to launch your own human rights blog.
#1 Register a domain
The first step to start your own human rights blog is to register a domain. Your domain should be catchy and easy to remember. You want to avoid hyphens and other special characters that make it difficult to communicate or type. For a human rights blog both, a .com or .org domain could be suitable. Registering a new domain only takes a few minutes and most often you will decide on a hosting at the same time.
#2 Choose your hosting
Your hosting is the space where your website is stored. You want your hosting to be secure, fast and reliable, so that your readers have a good experience. Since you are establishing a human rights website, you may also want it to be eco-friendly. There are a variety of green hosting providers available that either offset their carbon emissions or are powered by renewable energy.
#3 Install WordPress
After you have decided on your hosting and registered your domain, you want to install a Content Management System (CMS). Human Rights Careers is based on WordPress and you can use that too for free. GreenGeeks makes it easy to install WordPress automatically with the click of one button. Set your username and password. Note it down, so you have it ready when you want to log into your website in the future. Once you have installed WordPress, try visiting your website by typing your domain in the browser. You can log into your website simply by adding “/wp-admin/” to your domain. Now you may want to make your website more visually appealing. To do that, you can install a theme. But you can skip the next step if you like because a standard theme is already installed on your website.
#4 Install a theme
There are thousands of themes available for you to choose from. The most popular place to search and purchase a theme is themeforest. You can search for themes that were created for a specific purpose and adjust colors, text and images later to make it unique. Type in keywords like “nonprofit”, “donations”, “magazine” or “blog” until you have found a design that you like. After you have purchased the theme, which will cost around 60 USD, you need to download and install it. If you don’t want to spend money on the theme, there are many suitable themes available for free but a paid theme will look more professional and offer additional functionalities. Log into your website with your username and password. Upload the theme in the “Themes” section. Once you have uploaded it, don’t forget to click the button that says “activate”. Now your theme is active on your website and you can make visual adjustments. You will need to spend time to explore all the options and set it up correctly but all paid themes come with a detailed documentation how to do that.
#5 Start writing and promote your website
Once you are satisfied with the design, its time to write your first blog post. You can use tools like Grammarly to check your blog for mistakes and typos. When you are ready to make your blog post available to the public, hit “publish” and it will appear on your website. The last step is to let people know of your website. Share your blog post on twitter, facebook or other social media platforms of your choice.
Congratulations, you have just launched your own human rights blog.
#6 Bonus: Add a donation system
If you would like to receive donations from your readers you can install a donation plugin. There are plenty of them available for free that enable donations via Paypal. All you need is to install the plugin and register a Paypal account. If you require a more professional solution with more payment gateways paid plugins are available. You can also install them any time later or replace the plugin with another one. Download the plugin and go to the “Plugins” section of your website. Upload the plugin and activate it. Set it up in the way described in the documentation and you are ready to receive donations.
