Installing WordPress..

As mentioned previously on NNM, we think WordPress is a fantastic bit of content management software. Here’s a little guide to get you setup and running in no time at all, the WordPress 5 Minute Install page contains all the details you need, and I’m going to walk through the process.

Before you begin, check three things:
1. Do you have admin access to your hosting account?
2. Can you upload and edit files via FTP?
3. Are you online?

Cool.
Firstly, download the latest version of WordPress here and unzip to a folder on your computer.
Fire up the server control panel and log in. We’re going to create a database for WordPress to populate.

I’m going to refer to the process using the cPanel control panel due to its popularity, if you do not have the cPanel interface on your server account you can find other guides here.
Find the box labelled ‘Databases’ on the cPanel home page by scrolling down, and click on the ‘MySQL Databases’ icon.
Enter a suitable name for your database such as ‘wordpress’ or the name of your website, hit the ‘Create Database’ button making a note of the name including the prefix.
Next we need to add a user to the database. On the same page there, enter the username and password as required and click on ‘Create User’. You will need this info in the next steps so make a note of the username (including prefix) and password.
The final step in this process is to add the user to the database, so still on the same page go to the dropdown boxes at the bottom just above the ‘Current Users’ list. Select the user you have just created in the first box and the name of the database in the 2nd box and click ‘Add’. If you haven’t previously created any databases they should be the only options available to choose. The next screen allows you to restrict the user permissions for the database. In this instance we need to allow WordPress total control of the database and as such click the ‘All PRIVILEGES’ checkbox at the top and press ‘Make Changes’ to save.
You will be then shown a screen hopefully confirming the new user has been added to the new database and after clicking ‘Go Back’ the database screen now has your new database and user listed in the ‘current databases’ box.

That’s all the cPanel actions needed, now its time to add your details to the config file and upload to your server. Find the folder you unzipped the WordPress package too and locate the wp-config-sample.php file in the root directory.
Rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and open the file in a text or code editor (notepad will be fine). We’re going to insert the database information we created a moment ago by editing the file. The first few lines of text are comments explaining what the file does, the ones that need to be changed are highlighted in blue in the picture on the left, click the image for a bigger version. In your wp-config.php file find the line:

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');

and swap ‘database_name_here’ for the name of your new database, for example:

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');

then do the same process for the username and password replacing the current info with the details you just set up.
Next if you’re not using cPanel you will need to change the DB_Host option too.
If you are using cPanel then ‘localhost’ is fine so scroll on down to the next set of commands:

define('AUTH_KEY',         'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY',  'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY',    'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_KEY',        'put your unique phrase here');
define('AUTH_SALT',        'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT',   'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_SALT',       'put your unique phrase here');

Go to the online key generator using a different browser tab or window, and copy the unique keys it has generated for you pasting them over the existing empty keys in the wp-config.php file.
Save and close the file, we are now ready to upload!

Open your FTP client and navigate to the directory on your site where you would like the WordPress files to live. In this case I’m going to put them in an folder called example on the site example.com so the address would look like:

http://www.example.com/example/

upload the total content of the WordPress package you downloaded including the wp-config.php file you edited, copy the directory structure directly as it has unzipped on your PC so you have the wp-admin, wp-content and wp-includes folders in the root folder you choose (in this case example.com/example).

Wait until all the files have uploaded and navigate to the installation page (install.php) in the wp-admin directory you just uploaded, in my case it was:

http://www.example.com/example/wp-admin/install.php

Enter the Name of the website in the appropriate box and choose a username other than admin for security purposes. Fill in your intended password twice and your email address then hit the ‘Install WordPress’ button and boom you’re off. Hit ‘Log In’ on the next screen and log into the WordPress using the username and password you’ve just set and there we go, a totally clean installation of WordPress is now live on your server, ready to do your bidding.

In the next article we’ll have a look at the next steps in configuring and customizing your new WordPress website including setting up menu’s, configuring widgets and choosing themes as well as a brief overview of plug-ins.