Over the past few days I have come across numerous tools and resources for working with WordPress. This is one of the benefits of using an Open Source, however on the negative side you see that there is no central management system, neither is there any quality check on them. I hope to provide some light to novice bloggers in this post.

Let me start with the tools that I generally use, rather cant live without:

Notepad2(Windows) or TextWrangler(Mac)
Filezilla(Win & Mac) or Cyberduck(Win & Mac) or RBrowser(only Mac)
Firefox 3.x.x(Win & Mac)
Web Developer extension for Firefox
FireBug extension for Firefox
Colorzilla extension for Firefox
MeasureIt extension for Firefox
Gimp(Win & Mac)

The Resources/things that you would need before you install WordPress are:

Server for your WordPress(Bluehost, Hostgator, IXWebHosting, LunarPages, etc)
Domain Name(Godaddy, NameCheap, Bluehost)
Wordpress installation instructions(check How To Install WordPress With Hosted Account or check the video @ Sparsham)
Wordpress Theme(Free Wrodpress theme or Premium WordPress theme)
Blog logo(Yes logo)
Wordpress Plugins, that you would like to install(check wordpress SEO plugins and WordPress essential plugins).

After you have these things in place, you need to follow the WordPress installation instructions to complete the process of installation.
Delete the default/automatic ‘first post’. Upload the plugins and themes in the respective folders in wp-content and activate them as desired. Upload the Blog logo in the server, give the url in the WordPress theme(Its generally easier to do this change in a Premium wordpress theme when compared to a Free wordpress theme). Customize the theme to match your requirements(editing the CSS).

Delete
wp-admin/install.php

Delete
wp-admin/upgrade.php

You are now all set to start blogging in WordPress.