How To Install Wordpress

You’re in for a treat as installing Wordpress takes less that 10 minutes to setup.

There are a variety of reasons why you’d choose Wordpress over the many different content management systems (CMS) out there. But if you’re reading this, you’ve probably already made up your mind. Just before we begin I’d recommend you read this article first as I mention handy shortcuts to the more advanced and adventurous of you. So let’s get started.

What you need:

1. Web Hosting with:
  (i) MySQL 4.1.2 or greater
  (ii) PHP 4.3 or greater
  (iii) The mod_rewrite Apache module
2. FTP Client

The requirements are pretty basic and nowadays you’d expect any quality web host to meet the bare minimum. Note: Always check with your host before signing up. For the purposes of this demonstration I’ll be showing you both the conventional FTP method and the Shell (SSH) method of installing Wordpress. SSH is my preferred method as it so quick move the installation files across. I’ll cover all the bases in this tutorial.

Getting Started

You need to download the latest version of Wordpress. This is always available from the Wordpress download page.

Download the .zip file to an easy location on your computer, extract the folder ‘wordpress’ and upload the contents to your web host’s public directory. The public folder is where the web pages and files are kept and has different names depending on your hosting provider. The most common names are public_html and httpdocs.

SSH Tip
If you’re hosting provider allows you to SSH you can use the WGET function to pull the .zip file directly from Wordpress.org to your hosting account. This saves time downloading and uploading the files. SSH into your account and go to your public folder.

Copy file your server
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip

Unzip the downloaded folder
unzip latest.zip

Move the files from the wordpress folder to the root of your public folder
mv wordpress/* ./

Now all your files are uploaded and in the correct place let’s start by visiting your webpage. Visit the domain name you’re installing Wordpress onto using a web browser and the installer will appear.

Click Create Configuration File.

For the purposes of this demonstration, I won’t be showing you how to create a database. Depending on your hosting provider this can vary. So I’m going to assume you know how to create one, and that you have done so already. So, click Let’s Go.

Enter your Database information and click Submit.

If the Wordpress installer can communicate with the database you’ll see the message All right Sparky. Click Run the install.

Enter the title of your Blog and enter your personal email address. If you haven’t thought of a name yet you can change it in the future. But your email address must be correct as this’ll be how you get you notifications from the system. Once you’ve entered the information, click Install Wordpress.

Ta-Da! Easy Peasy! Installation is complete. Make note of the admin username and password as this is extremely difficult to recover in the future. When logging in for the first time I would recommend changing it to something more memorable.