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You’ll be happy to know that the process of downloading and installing WordPress is delightfully simple, and depending on your web hosting provider, they may even provide a 1-click script via Fantastico that will make it even simpler. If they don’t, never fear: it’s only 4 simple steps!
Requirements
WordPress has pretty simple requirements. Check that your web host supports:
- PHP version 4.2 or higher
- MySQL version 4.0 or higher
These are not the newest bleeding edge versions, so this should be easy. If you don’t already have a Web Host, then I recommend pair Networks. I’ve been using them since 1997 and am very pleased.
Step 1: Downloading WordPress
Go to http://wordpress.org/download. See the “Download .ZIP” button to the right? Click on it. That’s it for Step 1.
Step 2: Set up your MySQL database
Create your MySQL database and a full-access user. Back in the wordpress directory, you’ll need to rename the wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php, and enter your database information. There are 4 lines we are concerned with:
// ** MySQL settings ** //
define(’DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere’); // The name of the database
define(’DB_USER’, ‘usernamehere‘); // Your MySQL username
define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘yourpasswordhere‘); // …and password
define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost‘); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value
Step 3: FTP Upload
You’ll need to upload WordPress to your web hosting provider. You can put your WordPress installation in the root of your domain like I’ve done here (www.domain.com), or a subfolder of your own choice (www.domain.com/wordpress or www.domain.com/blog, for example), but whichever folder the wp-config.php is in will be where your WordPress install will “live”.
Step 4: Run The Install
Go to your web directory where you put WordPress and start the installation. If you installed at the domain root, you’ll go to www.domain.com/wp-admin/install.php, and if you installed in a subfolder the address will be in the form of www.domain.com/subfolder/wp-admin/install.php.
This will take you to a page with the 3 big choices you need to make:
- Your Blog’s Title
- Your Email Address
- Whether or not you want search engines to see your blog
Then you click the big grey button that says “Install WordPress”. WordPress will do its thing and quickly you will see a page with the default login of “admin” and a random password to use, along with the login page link. Congratulations! You’ve installed WordPress!
From here, you could literally post away without customizing your installation, but there are many good reasons why you’ll want to do some customization like installing plugins, setting your feeds, linking, networking, and marketing. These will be the subject of future posts.
Tags: blog, Building The Site, How To, how to install wordpress, HowTo, installing wordpress, PHP, WordPress
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