So for next Monday, make sure you complete the following:

1. Most importantly get your domain name and hosting service setup. Here is a link to Martha Burtis’s tutorial on getting started (I’m hoping to do a video tutorial tomorrow as well). She suggests you get the experience of having to point your domain to the hosting services’ name servers, but if you’d prefer to register your domain with any of the suggested hosting options I think that’s ok. Just remember DO NOT host with GoDaddy or any other hosting company that doesn’t use a LAMP environment with the CPanel.

2. Install WordPress. There’s a great tutorial from Martha here on how to do this. And I’m fine with you not using a subd0main or subdirectory for the site if you prefer, you’re choice. Also, the Cast Iron Coding CPanel uses Fantastico, while Bluehost and some others use Simple Scripts. They’re basically the same thing, so look for one or the other.

3. Setup accounts with Twitter, Flickr, and Youtube (or alternates if you’d like). You don’t necessarily have to create a Twitter account, but a lot of course conversation is going to take place there. And consider using Gravatar to manage avatars for these accounts. I made a quick video tutorial on Gravatar and suggest you use it if you wish for your avatar to be visible when you comment on blogs.

4. Register your blog with the ds106 website here. This will make sure that all of your posts are aggregated to the ds106 mothership site. If you’d prefer to use a tag that controls which posts go to ds106, add “/tag/ds106? to the end of your URL. For example: http://myawesomeds106site.net/tag/ds106/ If you do this though, you must remember to tag all ds106 posts with “ds106!”

5. Finally get into your Dashboard and make your first post! Tell any story about yourself you’d like, use images, video, audio, anything, and make sure you tag it with “assignment1?.

As for our first video broadcast, we’re going to use the ds106.tv streaming channel and are pushing for late afternoon Wednesday. I’ll post details on Twitter as to the exact time.

Good luck everyone and remember to use search to see what you can find for help, but also know you can email me or tweet me with questions.

Create a Youtube, Twitter, Gravatar, Flickr accounts.