Excel Formulas: 10 Formulas in excel

Excel Formulas You Should Definitely Know:
1. SUM
Formula: =SUM(5, 5) or =SUM(A1, B1) or =SUM(A1:B5)

The SUM formula does exactly what you would expect. It allows you to add 2 or more numbers together. You can use cell references as well in this formula.

The above shows you different examples. You can have numbers in there separated by commas and it will add them together for you, you can have cell references and as long as there are numbers in those cells it will add them together for you, or you can have a range of cells with a colon in between the 2 cells, and it will add the numbers in all the cells in the range.

2. COUNT
Formula: =COUNT(A1:A10)

The count formula counts the number of cells in a range that have numbers in them.



This formula only works with numbers though:



It only counts the cells where there are numbers.

**Learn more about the COUNT function in this on-demand, online course. FREE preview**

3. COUNTA
Formula: =COUNTA(A1:A10)

Counts the number of non-empty cells in a range. It will count cells that have numbers and/or any other characters in them.

The COUNTA Formula works with all data types.



It counts the number of non-empty cells no matter the data type.

4. LEN
Formula: =LEN(A1)

The LEN formula counts the number of characters in a cell. Be careful though! This includes spaces.

len

Notice the difference in the formula results: 10 characters without spaces in between the words, 12 with spaces between the words.

5. TRIM
Formula: =TRIM(A1)

Gets rid of any space in a cell, except for single spaces between words. I’ve found this formula to be extremely useful because I’ve often run into situations where you pull data from a database and for some reason extra spaces are put in behind or in front of legitimate data. This can wreak havoc if you are trying to compare using IF statements or VLOOKUP’s.

trim-formula-screenshot (2)

I added in an extra space behind “I Love Excel”. The TRIM formula removes that extra space. Check out the character count difference with and without the TRIM formula.

6. RIGHT, LEFT, MID
Formulas: = RIGHT(text, number of characters), =LEFT(text, number of characters), =MID(text, start number, number of characters).

(Note: In all of these formulas, wherever it says “text” you can use a cell reference as well)

These formulas return the specified number of characters from a text string. RIGHT gives you the number of characters from the right of the text string, LEFT gives you the number of characters from the left, and MID gives you the specified number of characters from the middle of the word. You tell the MID formula where to start with the start_number and then it grabs the specified number of characters to the right of the start_number.



I used the LEFT formula to get the first word. I had it look in cell A1 and grab only the 1st character from the left. This gave us the word “I” from “I love Excel”

I used the MID formula to get the middle word. I had it look in cell A1, start at character 3, and grab 5 characters after that. This gives us just the word “love” from “I love Excel”

I used the RIGHT formula to get the last word. I had it look at cell A1 and grab the first 6 characters from the right. This gives us “Excel” from “I love Excel”

7. VLOOKUP
Formula: =VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, range_lookup)

By far my most used formula. The official description of what it does: “Looks for a value in the leftmost column of a table, and then returns a value in the same row from a column you specify…”. (See the full explanation of VLOOKUP) Basically, you define a value (the lookup_value) for the formula to look for. It looks for this value in the leftmost column of a table (the table_array).

Note: If at all possible use a number for the lookup_value. This makes it a lot easier to make sure the data you are getting back is a correct match.

If it finds a match of the “lookup_value” in the left column of the “table_array” it will return the value in the column you specify using the “index_num”. The “index_num” is relative to the left most column. So, if you have the table_index look in column A and you want what is returned to be what’s in column B the “index_num” would be 2 because the leftmost column, column A in this case, is the 1st column in the table array and column B is the 2nd column (hence the 2 for the index number). If you want what is in column C to be returned you’d put 3 for the index_num. The “range_lookup” is a TRUE or FALSE value. If you put TRUE it will give you the closest match. If you put FALSE it will only give you an exact match. I only use FALSE when using the VLOOKUP formula.

Example:

You have 2 lists: 1 with a sales person’s ID and the sales revenue for the quarter. Another with the sales person’s ID and the sales person’s name. You want to match up the sales person’s name to the sales person’s revenue numbers for the quarter. They are all jumbled around so to manually match this, even for a small number of salesmen would leave room for a high margin of error and take a lot of time.

The first list goes from A1 to B13. The 2nd list goes from D1 to E25.

In cell C1 I would put the formula =VLOOKUP(B18, $A$1:$B$13, 2, FALSE)

B18 = the lookup_value (the sales person’s ID. This is a number that appears on both lists.)

$A$1:$B$13 = the “table_array”. This is the area I want the formula to search the leftmost column (column E in this case) for the “lookup_value”. I went to F because if it finds match in column E, I want it to return what’s in column F. (The money signs are there so that the table_array will stay the same no matter where the formula is moved or copied to. This is called an absolute reference.)

2 = the index_num. This tells the formula the number of columns away from the left most column to return in case of match. So, if you find a match between the lookup_value and the leftmost column of the table array, return what’s in the same row in the 2nd column of the table (the 1st column is always the leftmost column. It starts at 1, not 0).

FALSE= tells the formula I want it to only return the value if it’s an exact match.

I would then copy and paste that formula along all the cells in column C next to the first list. This would give me a perfectly aligned list with the sales person’s ID, sales person’s revenue for the quarter, and the sales person’s name.



In order to get a nice neat list of Sales Person ID, Sales Person Name, and Sales Person Revenue all next to each other I used the VLOOKUP formula to compare 1 list to another.

This is a complicated formula, but an extremely useful one. Check out some other examples: Vlookup Example, Microsoft’s Official Example.

**Learn more about the VLOOKUP function in this on-demand, online course. FREE preview**

8. IF Statements
Formula: =IF(logical_statement, return this if logical statement is true, return this if logical statement is false)

When you’re doing an analysis of a lot of data in Excel there are a lot of scenarios you could be trying to discover and the data has to react differently based on a different situation.

Continuing with the sales example: Let’s say a salesperson has a quota to meet. You used VLOOKUP to put the revenue next to the name. Now you can use an IF statement that says: “IF the salesperson met their quota, say “Met quota”, if not say “Did not meet quota” (Tip: saying it in a statement like this can make it a lot easier to create the formula, especially when you get to more complicated things like Nested IF Statements in Excel).

It would look like this:

In the example with the VLOOKUP we had the revenue in column B and the person’s name in column C (brought in with the VLOOKUP). We could put their quota in column D and then we’d put the following formula in cell E1:

=IF(C3>D3, “Met Quota”, “Did Not Meet Quota”)

This IF statement will tell us if the first salesperson met their quota or not. We would then copy and paste this formula along all the entries in the list. It would change for each sales person.



Having the result right there from the IF statement is a lot easier than manually figuring this out.

9. SUMIF, COUNTIF, AVERAGEIF
Formulas: =SUMIF(range, criteria, sum_range), =COUNTIF(range, criteria), =AVERAGEIF(range, criteria, average_range)

These formulas all do their respective functions (SUM, COUNT, AVERAGE) IF the criteria are met. There are also the formulas: SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, AVERAGEIFS where they will do their respective functions based on multiple criteria you give the formula.



I use these formulas in our example to see the average revenue (AVERAGEIF) if a person met their quota, Total revenue (SUMIF) for the just the sales people who met their quota, and the count of sales people who met their quota (COUNTIF)

10. CONCATENATE
A fancy word for combining data in 2 (or more) different cells into one cell. This can be done with the Concatenate excel formula or it can be done by simply putting the & symbol in between the two cells. If I have “Steve” in cell A1 and “Quatrani” in cell B1 I could put this formula: =A1&” “&B1 and it would give me “Steve Quatrani”. (The “ “ puts a space in between what you are combining with the &). I can use =concatenate(A1, “ “, B1) and it will give me the same thing: “Steve Quatrani”



Finding The Right Excel Formulas For The Job

There are 316 built in functions in Excel. You’re not going to sit there and memorize what all of them do (or at least I hope not!). Luckily Excel has a built in wizard that helps you find the correct formula for what you’re looking to do (if there is one).

Click the “fx” next to the formula bar in Excel



This brings up a menu and in there you can type in a description of what you are trying to do and it will bring up the correct excel formula:



I typed in “remove extra spaces” and it returned the TRIM formula that we went over earlier.

More Excel Formulas
There is so much more that I use on a regular basis such as Time formulas (NOW, TODAY, MONTH, YEAR, DAY, etc.), other formulas like AND and OR, along with many others.

The real power comes in combining these functions into complicated excel formulas.

Learn Excel Formulas Today!

Breaking Down Complicated Excel Formulas
=IFERROR(TRIM(IF(LEN(VLOOKUP(F7, Sheet2!$A$1:$B$10000, 2, FALSE))>0,SUBSTITUTE(VLOOKUP(F7, Sheet2!$A$1:$B$10000, 2, FALSE), ” “, “”),””)), “”)

Do you see formulas like the one above and run away screaming AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Well I don’t blame ya!

This can be a really intimidating formula even for the most seasoned Excel user.

I have a solution for you that makes it easy to both break down, and build up complicated combinations of Excel formulas but first check out this short video by fellow Udemy trainer, Mynda Treacy, that will reveal tips on how to get inside the mind of an Excel formula:



So What’s Going on With This Excel Formula?
Let’s break down all the Excel functions in it:

IFERROR

TRIM

IF

LEN

VLOOKUP

SUBSTITUTE

I’m not going to go in depth into each formula, but you’ll get the point.

Let’s start with the innermost formula. This is the end result that you are trying to accomplish.

We want to take a phrase (that we get with a VLOOKUP) that has a space in it and SUBSTITUTE that space with nothing. So it will take a phrase like “Excel Formula” and make it “ExcelFormula”.

SUBSTITUTE(VLOOKUP(F7, Sheet2!$A$1:$B$10000, 2, FALSE), ” “, “”)

We use the VLOOKUP formula to get the actual phrase we want from a different sheet in the Excel Workbook if it matches what’s in cell F7.

VLOOKUP(F7, Sheet2!$A$1:$B$10000, 2, FALSE)

We use an IF statement to say IF the number of characters (LEN) of what’s returned from the VLOOKUP is above 0, then run the VLOOKUP, otherwise, put nothing here. This way if the VLOOKUP returns nothing, then nothing will happen and this will prevent most errors.

IF(LEN(VLOOKUP(F7, Sheet2!$A$1:$B$10000, 2, FALSE))>0,SUBSTITUTE(VLOOKUP(F7, Sheet2!$A$1:$B$10000, 2, FALSE), ” “, “”),””)

We then wrap it with the TRIM function which gets rid of all extra spaces, besides 1 space in between words. Sometimes when you’re getting data from a database extra spaces can be added after a word. This can make it really hard to compare data from different sources, so the TRIM function comes in handy a lot!

TRIM(IF(LEN(VLOOKUP(F7, Sheet2!$A$1:$B$10000, 2, FALSE))>0,SUBSTITUTE(VLOOKUP(F7, Sheet2!$A$1:$B$10000, 2, FALSE), ” “, “”),””)

Finally we wrap it in the IFERROR formula. This formula will be triggered if the other formulas wind up giving you an error. It could look something like #N/A and that’s pretty ugly. This can happen for legitimate reasons, but you don’t want to hand your boss a sheet full of #N/A symbols.

What happens is IF the combined formulas return any excel error, it will make the cell blank, otherwise it will show the results of the formula.

=IFERROR(TRIM(IF(LEN(VLOOKUP(F7, Sheet2!$A$1:$B$10000, 2, FALSE))>0,SUBSTITUTE(VLOOKUP(F7, Sheet2!$A$1:$B$10000, 2, FALSE), ” “, “”),””)), “”)

There you have it, this long complicated formula broken down into simple step by step functions.

You can use the same method for building up a long formula

Our goal is to SUBSTITUTE the spaces for nothing so we start with that. We then have to pull it in from another sheet so we use VLOOKUP for that, etc., etc.

You always start with the innermost formula, the end result that you are looking for. Then you use other formulas to help you deal with the different situations you’ll have to deal with working with large datasets.

Resources to Become an Excel Expert:
This article is the tip of the iceberg.  Check out these other resources for more tips.

Resources For Showing Data:
Excel Formulas will help you deal with data, how you present that data is a whole other animal. Check out this awesome Excel Dashboard course if you’re interested in using Excel for reporting.

Resources For Excel Help:
Mr. Excel

No matter how good you get at Excel there is too much for one person to be great at everything Excel can do. The Mr. Excel forums are the place to go for any questions. They have a very active community around that site and you can probably get your excel questions answered very quickly.

OzGrid

There are a ton of examples for how to do just about anything in Excel or VBA on Ozgrid.

Learning Excel Macros and VBA
Formulas are awesome by themselves. Using VBA to create Excel Macros in combination with Excel Formulas is how you become a true Excel expert.

I completely automated a business analyst job I had at a fortune 500 company using these methods.

How I Became the “Excel Expert”
It was my 3rd year in college and I went to intern for an options trading firm. There were some brilliant people at this place and even the janitors knew Excel better than I did. The intern in there before me was a software engineer who had basically written a ton of macros that automated almost every daily task I had to do. Great! I thought, I’d have the easiest time doing the daily boring tasks and I could spend time learning how to be a trader.

Well, the week after he left, EVERYTHING BROKE. None of the macros were working and they all depended on each other. “I was never trained on this” I thought, because the software engineer had only told me what buttons to push and when, never how to do it manually. I started giving out wrong information, needing to ask busy people to take time to help me, and was just generally helpless. I did the best I could, but I didn’t even know most excel formulas, much  less how to read and write VBA code and create Excel Macros.

Necessity, the Mother of Invention
Then one day I was taken aside and my manager said, “I know the kid before you did all this stuff, and you weren’t brought here to write code, but if you can’t fix it and start giving us the correct information on time, we’re going to have to go in a different direction.” WHAT?! I thought. I hadn’t been prepared or trained for this, and code that another person wrote is not working, and I’m going to get fired for it? I knew he meant it. I had seen interns get fired from here, it wasn’t pretty. It was an open trading floor, you didn’t get pulled aside into someone’s office, you were unceremoniously escorted off the floor and everyone knew what happened.

So, I had a goal to meet, and I had to meet it quickly. I set off to learn VBA, Excel Formulas, and how to get all these Excel macros working. After about 2 weeks of waking up at 5:30am, struggling through the day with the help of others, then teaching myself Excel until about 2am, I had learned enough to read the code that was written. After about a month I became proficient at it. After about 6 months I knew enough to write any Excel formula I wanted, read & write VBA code, and solve any Excel problem I had without doing manual work in Excel.

Learning it was a pain in the butt! There was no single resource to learn what I needed to learn. I had to go all over the web to find things or ask questions on Mr. Excel. That’s why I created a course on learning Excel. I put all my knowledge gained over the last 5 years, all my tips & tricks into this Excel VBA tutorial.

About the Author:


Steve Quatrani is an excel expert with years of experience using and teaching Excel. He has created advanced systems using VBA code, advanced dashboards using Excel and other business intelligence software, and he continues to build new ways of viewing and analyzing data in Excel and automating those processes. He teaches Microsoft Excel VBA Video Tutorial on Udemy.

From Steve:

I was astounded by how little some people knew about Excel and they use it every day! I decided to start teaching people how to use Excel and utilize the true power of this program to make their lives easier. Throughout my video courses I teach you everything you need to know to become the Excel expert, to spend less time doing stuff manually Excel, and to make your life a whole lot easier all using Excel.

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make money with yllix ads

join by clicking here
 

Make Money With Yllix.com. Yllix.com is one of the best advertising media site like as Google AdSense. Yllix.com is familiar by the name of YLLIX Media. This site is very new, but looks very professional, any one can use this site for money making online. Use Yllix.com site and boost up your online earning very quickly. Actually this site is the best alternative of google Adsence. Yllix.com inaugurate there advertising business in October 2012. You can use this site as a publisher and also Advertiser.

Yllix Media Review:

Yllix Media is an another advertising option as publisher or advertiser like as Google Adsense. You can use this advertising media site with all kind of standard Advertising setups like as Banner Ad, PopUp Ad, Layer Ad, Redirect Ad, Prepop Ad, Full page Ad in size like as 300x250, 728x90, 468x60, 120x600, 160x600. The great news for Publisher and advertiser isyllix.com or Yllix Media site allow any kind of website, Blog, forum or any other .

Yllix media publisher review. Yllix.com publisher area is very popular for website, Blog owner. Any website or blog owner can use this site totally free and make money very simply to publishing there ads. Yllix media is a legit publisher network in this world, Personally I use this site and make some handsome cash in several time. Yllix Media functions are very impressive for publishers who approved to show Yllix Premium advertising which has over $0.10 CPM price for all kind of small or big publishers with free hosted blog or Websites.

How much Pay Yllix media per visitor:

Yllix media pay per visitor is not fixed, It's totally fluctuated and depends on visitors country. If you have quality traffic like as USA or European country based traffic then you can better earning. 

Yllix.com is Legit or Scam:

Yllix.com is a legit site, no doubt about this. I personally use this site, so I confirm you 100% this is trustworthy and reliable site. Any one can use this site with 100% confidence.

 

Yllix.com Payment System:

Yllix.com support very popular and useful payment system like as Paypal and Payza system, I personally use Payza for withdrawing cash. You can cash out this when your income reach in $1 USD by Paypal or Payza.

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How to make flash diskbootable

Applies To: Windows Server 2012 Essentials, Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials

You can create a bootable USB flash drive to use to deploy Windows Server 2012 Essentials . The first step is to prepare the USB flash drive by using DiskPart, which is a command-line utility.

To create a bootable USB flash drive

1. Insert a USB flash drive into a running computer.
2. Open a Command Prompt window as an administrator.
3. Type diskpart.
4. In the new command line window that opens, to determine the USB flash drive number or drive letter, at the command prompt, type list disk, and then click ENTER. The list disk command displays all the disks on the computer. Note the drive number or drive letter of the USB flash drive.
5. At the command prompt, type select disk <X>, where X is the drive number or drive letter of the USB flash drive, and then click ENTER.
6. Type clean, and the click ENTER. This command deletes all data from the USB flash drive.
7. To create a new primary partition on the USB flash drive, type create part pri, and then click ENTER.
8. To select the partition that you just created, type select part 1, and then click ENTER.
9. To format the partition, type format fs=ntfs quick, and then click ENTER.

   Important
   If your server platform supports Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), you should format the USB flash drive as FAT32 rather than as NTFS. To format the partition as FAT32, type format fs=fat32 quick, and then click ENTER.

10. Type active, and then click ENTER.
11. Type exit, and then click ENTER.
12. When you finish preparing your custom image, save it to the root of the USB flash drive.

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five free wireless networking tools

Wi-Fi is relatively easy to configure, but optimizing, securing, and diagnosing problems with a wireless network can be a challenge. Here are five free tools that can help.

Note: This list is also available as a photo gallery.

1: CommView for WiFi

CommView for WiFi is a packet sniffer that is specifically designed for Wi-Fi networks. As you would expect, the program allows you to capture packets and then search them for specific strings, packet types, etc. One of the most useful features provided by this utility is an alarm (Figure A) . The software can alert you whenever certain types of traffic are detected. Such a feature could go a long way toward improving Wi-Fi security.

Figure A

CommView for WiFi

2: inSSIDer

inSSIDer is similar to the old Net Stumbler application, except that it has been modernized and it works with operating systems such as Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. The application is designed to detect wireless networks and report on their type, maximum transfer rate, and channel usage. There is even a graphical representation of each wireless network's amplitude and channel usage (Figure B).

Figure B

inSSIDer

3: Wireless Wizard

Wireless Wizard is a free utility that is designed to help you get the best possible performance from your wireless network connection. In addition to providing all manner of statistics about your wireless network, the software offers a series of diagnostic tests you can use to see how well your wireless network is performing. It also includes a spectrum analyzer that recommends the best wireless channel for you to use (Figure C) .

Figure C

Wireless Wizard

4: Wireless Key Generator

Wireless Key Generator (Figure D) is a simple application that helps improve wireless network security. It prompts you to specify the type of security you are using on your wireless network and the key strength. It then generates a random encryption key for you to use. The use of random keys helps to reduce the temptation to use simple keys that might be easy to guess.

Figure D

Wireless Key Generator

5: WeFi

WeFi helps you locate free wireless hotspots throughout the world. The application's initial screen displays statistics related to your current connectivity. It also lets you see a filtered view of available hotspots. You can choose to see your favorite hotspots, approved WeSpots, or any available Wi-Fi. WeFi's best feature is the Wi-Fi maps, which show you the locations of public Wi-Fi hotspots (Figure E).

Figure E

WeFi

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Enable robot.txt on blogger(2018)

Robot.txt is a way to tell search engines whether they are allow to index a page in the search result or not. The bots are automatic, and before they could access your site, they check the Robot.txt file to make sure whether they are allowed to crawl this page or not.   Sometime, people do not want to stop searching engine from crawling their whole website. On the other hand, they want to specify few pages, which should not be indexed in the search results. Therefore, today in this article, we will show you How to Enable Custom Robot.txt File in Blogger?

First of all, go to Blogger.com >> your site >> Settings >> Search engine Preference >> Crawlers and indexing. Now you will be able to see two options i.e. Custom robots.txt and Custom robots header tags. These two options would provide you the flexibility to customize your robot.txt file.

Custom robots.txt: This option provides you the ability to edit your whole robot.txt file. You can just type your content whether you want the content to be crawled by spiders or not. However, You can always undo your actions and can always revert back to normal.
Custom robots header tags: This option is a bit completed. It does not provide you the ability to write your codes instead it provides few options with the check boxes. So, if have no idea about head tags then stay away from it.
Now you have to enable the custom robot.txt file so press the edit button which is present next to the “Custom robots.txt” option. After selecting the edit button, it would ask you to enable custom robots.txt content so press “Yes” and proceed to the next step.

In the text area, type the content which you want to exclude from being crawled. After editing the file according to your needs, press the save button to conclude. However, if you want to revert back to the default robot file then, you can select “No” instead of “Yes.

For Example:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /about

User-agent: *
Disallow: /contact

User-agent: *
Disallow: /services

We hope this tip would help you. If you are having any issue regarding crawling then, feel free to leave your questions in the comments below and our experts would try to help you in solving them.

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Custom Robots Header Tags Settings For Blogger (Blogspot Blogs)

Don’t you know there are search robots? They are responsible for recognising the updates on our sites and notifying the search engines about the same.

With the help of proper predefined tags, you can communicate with the crawlers to increase and decrease the search visibility. That’s what exactly you are going to read in this post.

How to Set up Custom Robots Header Tags on Blogger?

I hope you are a Blogger user looking forward to increasing your search engine exposure so that the organic traffic will reach a zenith.

If so, I recommend following this guide and enabling the custom robots header tags for maximum search engine visibility (especially for new blogs).

Before getting to know the process of setting up custom robots header tags on Blogger, you should know what they are.

Custom Robots Header Tags and Purpose

In Blogger, you are going to deal with the following custom robots header tags.

1. all – If you set this tag, crawlers are not bound by any constraints. They can freely crawl, index and expose your content.

2. noindex – Not all the blogs are for public notice. Even if you don’t share the URL of your personal blog with anybody, chances are people will come to it from search results. On such a scenario, you can use noindex tag as it prevents search engines from indexing the pages.

3. nofollow – Nofollow and dofollow tags are for outbound links. Dofollow is the default robot tag for all your outbound links. That means the search engines can sneak upon the pages you linked to. If you don’t want search bots to look through your links, addition of a nofollow tag must help you.

4. none – none combines the features of both noindex and nofollow tags. The crawlers will neither index your pages nor skim through the links.

5. noarchive – You might have noticed a cached label with most of the website links on SERPs. It shows that Google has captured a copy of your site into their server to display in case it goes down. That being said, the noarchive tag turns off cached version in search pages.

6. nosnippet – The text snippets in search results help people find what’s on the webpage. If you want to keep the content exclusive, you can turn this header tag on.

7. noodp – Open Directory Project or Dmoz is a man-made directory of websites. Google use the information from there sometimes. You can turn it off with this tag if you want to.

8. notranslate – Do you want to disable translation on your site? Then use notranslate for the exact purpose.

9. noimageindex – If you allow Google to index your images, people may steal it and use on their own websites. To prevent that, you can keep the images deindexed using noimageindex tag. 

10. unavailable_after – In Blogger, you will get a field right to this tag. So, the webpage will be deindexed after this time.

With that being said, let’s get into the real meat of this post.

How to Setup Custom Robots Header Tags?

As you know, we are talking about setting up robots tags on blogger. Follow the steps given below to proceed with this.

Step 1: Visit blogger.com and sign in to your account. From the list of your blogs, choose the one for which you want to modify robots tags.

Step 2: Then go to Settings >> Search preference. There you can see a setting called Custom robots header tags under Crawlers and Indexing. Click the Edit link to the right of it.

Step 3: At this step, you will notice two radio buttons. Obviously, the first one should be your pick.

Step 4: Now, you will get a set of checkboxes. But don’t get intimidated! It may feel like a complicated one, but it’s not. You can set them on your own by reading the “Custom Robots Header Tags and Purpose” once again. Or, just follow the same settings I chose (refer to the image given below) and hit Save changes.

Note: We can set this up for the homepage, archive pages, and post pages as well.

finished

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TIPS ON STARTING A BLOG(2018)

So, you want to start a blog huh? Great idea!

But…how the heck do you get started? There’s so much info out there on the web, and everyone’s telling you to do different things. Who do you listen to? Where’s the starting point?

Damnit, maybe you should just forget it – it’s too confusing!

Well, hold up. I used to be a blogging newbie too. I had the same problems. I started my blog (BloggingBasics101.com) way back in 2006, and I knew less than nothing about blogging. In fact it was only the week before I’d learnt what a blog was.

Now I know a ton about them, and my blog’s doing pretty well – I receive more than 300,000unique visitors per month which makes me consider myself someone you could listen to and learn from when it comes to building your own blog. I’m not some sort of Guru, but I certainly do know the basics.

I promise it’ll be simple, relatively easy, and definitely easy to understand (no stupid jargon). Sound good?

Awesome, let’s move on.

Why you should create a blog and join the blogging community

So below, I’m going to outline exactly what you need to do to get started and set up your own personal blog. Before we dive in though, I really want to talk about WHY you should build a blog.

Note: If you already have a solid idea of the whys, then skip this and go right ahead with the guide.

1. Blogging has quickly become one of the most popular ways of communicating and spreading information and news. There are literally millions of blogs online (don’t worry, you can make yours stand out and get noticed!).
2. It’s a great way to express yourself and also a fantastic way to share information with others.
3. You become a better person and a better writer.
4. The best reason? You can make money doing it!

I bet you already knew all of that, but it’s nice to be reminded.

One very last thing before we get started:

Creating your own blog can take a little while, probably up to 30 minutes. So grab yourself a coffee or juice (whatever you fancy) and let’s get stuck in. If you need any help during the set-up process, get in touch with me here and I’ll help as best I can and answer any questions you might have).

Disclosure: This guide to starting your own blog contains some affiliate links. If you purchase a service through one of these links I may earn a small commission, this is at no extra cost to you.

The Steps Covered In This Blogging Guide

It’s nowhere near as difficult as setting up a website from scratch (there’s very little technical ability needed here). In fact, there’s no coding required by you. Good news, huh?

How to Start a Blog in 5 Steps:

There’s five main steps you need to do in order to start a blog. If you follow this guide exactly, you’ll have your own blog set up in 30 minutes or less.

1. Choose your preferred blog platform
2. Choose web hosting for your blog
3. Setting up a blog on your own domain
4. Design your blog
5. Useful resources for blogging

So, we made it. Phew. Better late than never! So, without further ado, let’s jump into step 1.

Step 1 – Choose your preferred blogging platform

Choosing where you want to build blog is pretty much the first thing you have to do. I’m going to take a leap and assume you’ve heard of WordPress, and this is the platform I advocate. It’s massive.

It’s by far one of the biggest blogging platforms in the world, with countless plugins and add-ons and almost infinite ways to design and layout your blog.

There are more than 82 million active users of WordPress = a lot, basically.

There are other alternatives however, and they are listed below:

• Blogger – Definitely the next best thing to WordPress.
• Tumblr – Half social network, half blog. Interesting, and very simple to use.

Even though WordPress is bigger (and probably better) than those two, here are my reasons why you should still go with WordPress:

1. Super easy set-up and is free to use
2. Tons of free themes and layouts (I’m not kidding, there’s gazillions).
3. There’s a massive support forum in case you get stuck (you won’t, but it’s nice to have it there if you need it).
4. Your blog will be insanely fast and it’ll also look Functionality and form – perfect!
5. People can interact with you easily. Your content can be shared, commented on, and so on.

Now, Step 2 (see, we’re moving fast now!)

Step 2 – Self-hosting or a free alternative?

Whoa, slow down there! This is the biggest decision you’ll have to make before we go any further. You need to decide whether to pay for your blog or grab a free one.

WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger all offer free blogs for anyone. Awesome, right? It’s perfect for those of us who aren’t super serious about blogging. But it does have downsides:

1) You won’t be able to get your OWN domain name

On a free blog, your blog’s web address (your URL) will be butt-ugly. Like, really ugly. In short, create a free blog with any other the above free blog services and it’ll look like this:

• yourblog.wordpress.com
• yourblog.blogspot.com
• yourblog.tumblr.com

I know, ugly right?

2) Limits and more limits

There are some limits to free blogs. You can’t fully monetize it, and you don’t have the possibility to upload all those videos and images you want to show everyone – it’s all limited. Worse still, you won’t even have access to the free themes offered by WordPress.

3) You DON’T OWN your blog

It might sound silly at first, but you don’t actually own your blog. It’s hosted on someone else’s web property and they can delete it if they want so. They have done so in the past, and keep doing it in the future. Which means all your hard work on your blog, all those countless hours of writing blog posts might be vanished within seconds. Sad…

On the other hand, with a self-hosted blog on your own domain name – you are the REAL owner of your blog. You’ll be able to name your blog whatever you want, for example “YourName.com” or “YourAwesomeBlog.com. You can end it with .com, .co.uk, .net, .org, or virtually any other web suffix. Add to that unlimited bandwidth for videos, images and content plus the free themes and you have a winning combo.

So how much is hosting and a domain name? Not as much as you’re thinking, fortunately. It usually works out to about $5 to $10 per month, depending on your hosting provider which is less than a couple of coffees.

Step 3 – Start a blog on your own domain (if you chose self-hosting and a custom domain)

I’m going to push ahead based on the premise you’ve chosen WordPress, and if you haven’t, you should. Seriously, it’s the best.

If you’re still a little confused by what a self-hosted blog is, allow me to explain and how you can go about setting one up for yourself.

You’ll need to come up with a domain name you like and also choose a hosting company that can host your blog.

• Domain: The domain is basically the URL of your website. Examples: google.com (Google.com is the domain), Facebook.com (Facebook.com is the domain). See? Simple!
• Hosting: Hosting is basically the company that puts your website up on the internet so everyone else can see it. Everything will be saved on there. Think of it as a computer hard-drive on the internet where your blog will be saved.

Personally, I use iPage (for my blog domain and hosting), and I’ve got nothing but good things to say about it. It’s probably one of the cheapest (less than $2.50 per month) hosting providers out there. A domain name will cost around $10-15 a year, but with iPage they throw that in for free :). Big smiles for that! They’re the providers I use for all of my blogs, including the one you’re reading right now.

If for any reason you don’t want to go with iPage, feel free to choose your own hosting company. Most, if not all of them, should have a “one-click” WordPress install solution on their admin panel.

That button will automatically install WordPress on your blog. Did I say it was simple or what?

WordPress essentials aren’t often needed, but I’d recommend whois privacy (that will keep all your personal details private) and definitely automated backups (this’ll save your website just in case anything fails or disappears, so you won’t lose any or very little of your blog).

Once WordPress is installed on your website, all you have to do to start blogging is go to your WP-Admin page usually www.yourblognamehere.com/wp-admin and start writing by adding a new post.

At the start, the layout looks confusing, but it gets very understandable quickly. Don’t worry!

Step 4 – Designing your WordPress blog

Now, the fun bit.

Let’s make your blog look exactly how you want it to. To choose a new theme, you can either head to Appearance > Themes and install a free WordPress theme or you can head to a premium theme website like ThemeForest.net and buy a theme for around $40.

I usually choose something that looks professional and pretty easy to customise. WordPress also has this awesome feature that allows you to change themes with just a few clicks. So if you start getting tired of your current blog template, you can just switch to another one without losing any precious content or images.

Remember, your blog’s design should reflect both you and your personality, but also what the blog is about. There’s no point having a football-orientated theme if your blog is about tennis, understand?

On top of that, it should be easy to navigate if you want people to stick around. If it’s tricky and difficult to move around it, people won’t stay. Design is a subjective art; meaning everyone likes different things.

But no one likes ugly websites, and they especially hate websites that need a university degree to navigate. Make it easy for them.

Step 5 – Useful Resources For Beginner Bloggers

Bloggers come to blogging arena with varying degrees of online and social media experience, but we’ve all made more than a few newbie mistakes – there’s always room for more learning and improvement, whether you’re a beginner or you’ve been blogging for years.

If by some unfortunate circumstance you get stuck or have any questions for me about how to create a blog, just get in touch with me or leave a comment below. I’ll help you out with any problems.

Enjoy your new blog!

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