What is WordPress and why use it on your site? You ask. Well WordPress is an open source blogging platform. It is used by millions of websites and bloggers worldwide. This bogging application is based on PHP and MySQL. You literally have access thousands of FREE plugins o WordPress is a great way to get started with website design and development. Here are some other compelling reasons for using WordPress on your site.
- No startup cost to setup WordPress on your site
- Thousands of plugins that can make your website powerful yet easy to use
- Zero dollars spent on website design and development
- As blogging is “Content Heavy”, this is an excellent means of getting ranked high Search Engines.
More information on WordPress can be found at these sites:
WordPress.Com – If you want to just blog
WordPress.Org – If you want WordPress to power up your site
How to setup and install WordPress on your website?
For today’s tutorial on WordPress, we will guide you on how to use WordPress as your site’s platform. Today we are going to use our domain, www.ehowis.net. It is a brand new website that we registered with icdsoft.com, the company that is hosting our website. Today we will show you how to install WordPress 3.3.1 and setup it up as your website. This will totally eliminate the need for any website design and expensive web development services that you do not need. Regarding ICDSoft, it is an excellent web hosting company with great price packages and 99.9% server uptime. Currently they are using MySQL database and PHP version 5.3 which works well with WordPress. Contact us and we can get you domain and basic hosting package for just $4 a month!! Details on the hosting can be found on this webhosting page.
Let’s cut to the chase and jump into how to setup WordPress as your site, shall we?
1. Backup the files
As with an IT related task, it is always a good idea to the backup the database or website files before any major changes. We log into our website control panel using this address www.ehowis.net/cp.
This is what it looks like on our computer screen.
We click on Backup first. This brings a new screen where we have the ability to select Mail and Files. We do not have a database so we do not choose that selection. We click Backup Now. We get this message and then wait for a few minutes.
The backup files for “Mail” and “Files” will be created in a few minutes.
2. Download WordPress software
Next we need to install WordPress on our site. Basically we are going to download the files (WordPress-3.3.1.zip) to our computer and then upload it to the web hosting server. You can download the installation files from WordPress at this location:
Here is what it looks like on our computer display.
We download WordPress version 3.3.1 it to a folder c:\WordPress on our machine
3. Upload WordPress software to your hosting
Once you have downloaded the archive that contains the WordPress installation to your site, you need to upload it on your web hosting account. You can either extract all the WordPress files or upload them to the web server, or you can upload the archive and use the web hosting Control Panel’s File Manager to extract the zip package. We decided to extract files to our computer first and then upload.
This is what the screen shot looks like on our computer monitor.
The best way to upload multiple files to a web server is via FTP (File transfer Protocol). If you are installing the WordPress application in the main folder of your domain, you may have to delete the default index.php file first. You can do this either via FTP or through your web hosting File Manager. We are going to upload to the main directory using Filezilla, an excellent free FTP software.
Here is what it looks like on our end when we upload the WordPress files to our server.
4. Configure WordPress software next using wp-config.php file
Next you need to access the URL (website address) using the browser where the extracted WordPress files are located. In our case the site URL is as follows:
http://ehowis.net/index.php
You should see the first page of the WordPress installation as listed below. Go ahead and click the “Create a Configuration File” button. This is what our computer screen looks like.
After we clicked on that option, you will get something that looks like this. It is basically asking for the MySQL database information. Remember WordPress needs MySQL database to run. We have included a screen capture from our WordPress installation here.
Follow the “Let’s go!” link. On the next screen it is going to ask you to enter the database information. Don’t worry we walk you through the steps on how to do that.
5. Create a MySQL database for WordPress software
Next you need to create a MySQL database for the WordPress software application. You can do this through your web hosting Control Panel section. In our Hosting, we click on MySQL databases. We create the database first (using name WordPress) and click Create.
We have shown what it looks like on our puter.
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6. Create a specific MySQL database user for WordPress
Besides the database, you also need to create a MySQL user for WordPress. You can create it from the “MySQL Databases” section as well. Be sure to grant all privileges to this MySQL user. Following this we create the user as listed in the figure below:
Database name: ehowis_WordPress
MySQL User: ehowis_user
Password: ******
Privileges: All
Click on Add
7. Configure your database settings for WordPress
Next you need to configure your database for the following settings.
Database Name: You need to specify the MySQL database you created for your WordPress application.
User Name: You need to enter the MySQL username you created at your web hosting Control Panel
Password: You need to enter the password you assigned to your MySQL user.
Database Host: localhost
Table Prefix: You do not need to modify this setting
Here is what it looks like on our end.
Click Submit after you enter all the information. On the next screen, click on the “Run the install” button.
8. Enter information on your WordPress site
Site Title: You need to specify the name of your WordPress site. This should be a name of your choice, could be related to the content of your blog, company name, or domain name for example.
WordPress Username: Specify a username for the administration of your blog. (Save this please)
Password, twice: Fill in a password for the administration username, and repeat it.
Your E-mail for WP: You need to specify an administrative e-mail address for managing WordPress.
Check the option “Allow my site to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati.”
This is what it looks like on our computer display.
They do have a sense of humor over at WordPress development team, as we get this friendly message.
Success!
WordPress has been installed. Were you expecting more steps? Sorry to disappoint.
9. Log into your WordPress site
Click on the Login button and use the credentials that you had just setup earlier. Bingo!!
Here is what it looks like on our binary machine.
10. How to Add a new WordPress post?
Let’s go ahead and create a test post. Click on Posts in the left Navigation Bar and then select Add New. Go ahead and create a title for the post, add some text in the body and click Publish. Congrats, your blog is active just like that.
Here is a screen shot of what we see.
The blog post is now active. If you want to check it just open up a new web browser window and type in the URL address. For us it is our website address:
www.ehowis.net
Notice that now WordPress is running our site, no more web development or web developers needed! Woohoo!!
This is how it looks like on our computer window.
