Wordpress Step By Step Installation

Connect to your FTP Server
Using any FTP client, just connect to your FTP server and open the folder where you want to upload these files. I am using Filezilla as an FTP client here. After connecting to your FTP server, you will see the following window. (I am uploading my file in phpxperts.com in the testwp folder.)

connect to ftp server

connect to ftp server

On the left side, you will see the files from your local folder, and on the right side, you will see your remote folder.

Step 2: Upload the Files

Just locate the extracted WordPress files on your local machine from the left pane and drag all of them onto the right pane. You will see that all these files have been queued to be uploaded.

wordpress file upload

wordpress file upload

File transfer will then start automatically.

Step 3: Install

Now it’s time to install WordPress. For example, I just uploaded all my files at the URL http://www.phpxperts.net/WordPress. So this is going to be the URL of my WordPress blog. If you access your WordPress URL via your browser, it will look like this:

wordpress browser setup screen

wordpress browser setup screen

It says that you need to configure a file named wp-config.php before proceeding further. Open the WordPress folder and find the file named wp-config-sample.php. You have to rename this file as wp-config.php and modify its content. However, keep a backup of the original wp-config-sample.php file somewhere else for in case of problems. Don’t worry; you need not be a PHP programmer for editing this file. Just open this file with a simple editor like VI or Notepad. The following is an example of the original wp-config.php file:
// ** MySQL settings ** //
define('DB_NAME', 'WordPress'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'username'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password'); // and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value
// You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique prefix
$table_prefix = 'wp_';
// Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!
// Change this to localize WordPress. A corresponding MO file for the chosen language must be installed to wp-includes/languages.
// For example, install demo to wp-includes/languages and set WPLANG to 'de' to enable German language support.
define ('WPLANG', '');
/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__).'/');
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php');
?>

There are several parameters for setting up a successful connection to the MySQL database. You now have to modify them so that they match the original settings of your MySQL database. If you already have a web hosting account, then you probably know the MySQL database details (i.e. database name, username, and password) for your account. If you don’t have this data, please contact your web host providers for it. If you have cPanel in your web hosting account, you may create databases from the MySQL administration panel (depending on how many databases you can create for your hosting account). We will now discuss how to create a database from cPanel.

Well, it’s not mandatory that you need cPanel in your hosting account to create databases. Sometimes it is also possible to create databases using Ensim, HSphere, or Plesk. If you have shell or secured shell access, you can achieve this functionality by giving commands.

To create a database from cPanel, log into cPanel and click on the “MySQL database” icon. You will get a page showing the details of your database entries. In this
page, you will see a portion where you can create new databases as shown in the following screenshot:

wordpress db setup

wordpress db setup

Just enter the name of your database and click on the Add Db button; it will be created instantly. If database creation is successful, you will get the following confirmation:

wordpress mysql maintenance

wordpress mysql maintenance

If you click on the Go Back link, you will reach the previous page where your database is listed in the available Db drop-down box. Now the next task is to create a user and assign that user to your database.
Enter a username and password into the text field and click on the Add User button. You will get a confirmation after successfully creating a user.

Let us assign full privilege to this newly created user of the database that you just created. Select the newly created user from the User drop-down list and the database from the Db list. Please ensure that you have marked the checkbox for All. Finally, click on the Add User to Db button, and that’s it!

wordpress php db test

wordpress php db test

You can use this data for a custom WordPress installation.
If you are testing a WordPress installation on your local PHP, Apache, and MySQL installation, please log into your MySQL client and execute the following command to create a database:

mysql> create database wp;
After creating the database, modify the wp-config.php file with the proper parameters. Actually, all we change here are the database parameters. For my machine, the wp-config.php file after modification looks like this:

// ** MySQL settings ** //
define('DB_NAME', 'wp'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'hasin'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'WordPress!@#$%'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value
// You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique prefix
$table_prefix = 'wp_'; // Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!
// Change this to localize WordPress. A corresponding MO file for the chosen language must be installed to wp-includes/languages.
// For example, install demo to wp-includes/languages and set WPLANG to 'de' to enable German language support.
define ('WPLANG', '');
/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__).'/');
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php');
?>

If you have only one MySQL database in your web-hosting account and you don’t have permission to create more, then the $table_prefix setting in wp-config.php is extremely helpful. For WordPress installation, this setting is used as a prefix for each table name; so there are no conflicts in between the existing tables and the newly created tables. By changing this setting, you can install as many WordPress installations as you want using a single MySQL database.

Note that I did not make any changes after the fifth line. Now again locate the WordPress URL via your browser. It now looks something like the following screenshot. Here, you will get a link to install.php.

wordpress install screen

wordpress install screen

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Installing WordPress Manually

As I said before, WordPress can be downloaded for a manual installation, which is extremely easy and requires no previous programming skills or advanced blog-user experience. It’s simply some kind of ready-set-go type of blogging engine where you can easily start even if you are blogging for the first time. For the automatic installation, we will discuss how to set it up with the different administration tools available in cPanel.


First of all, download WordPress from its website at http://wordpress.org/download/. It is available in both Gzip (tar.gz) and ZIP (.zip) format. Take a look at the following screenshot in which the download links are available on the right side; you may download either of them. If you are using Windows XP or Linux operating systems, you don’t need to have any unzipping utility for extracting. Windows XP and later versions can directly extract files from compressed ZIP files. You will also get a built-in extraction facility if you are using Linux.

wordpress manual installation

wordpress manual installation

Before installing WordPress, please check the minimal requirements. You must have a web server that supports PHP. The best web server that you can count on is Apache. For PHP, you must have at least version 4.2 or later installed on your machine. WordPress will also run with PHP 5.x.x series without any problem. Besides, you require a MySQL database server; you must have at least MySQL version 3.23.23 or later installed on your machine. You may also have a local or remote MySQL server with complete privileges to create tables required for WordPress. If your web server meets all these requirements, it is surely ready to proceed further. Let us take a look at these minimum requirements once again. Apache mod_rewrite is also required for a user-friendly URL.

Apache mod_rewrite is installed by default in most web hosting accounts. If you are hosting your own account, you can enable mod_rewrite by modifying the Apache web server configuration file. You can check the URL http://www.tutorio.com/tutorial/enable-mod-rewrite-on-apache to know how to enable mod_rewrite on your web server. If you are running on shared hosting, then ask your system administrator to install it for you. However, it is more likely that you already have it installed on your hosting account.

Let us download the archive (either in .zip or .tar.gz format) of WordPress. Besides the remote installation of WordPress, I strongly suggest installing a local version as well. If you plan to develop themes or plug-ins, testing and deploying them directly to the remote server may require more time than testing and deploying them locally. Let us try the remote installation. If you extract the WordPress ZIP file, it will look something like this:

apache2triad wordpress

apache2triad wordpress

Just note that there is a readme.html file inside this folder that gives you a very good introduction to many different features of WordPress.

Now we need to upload all these files to our website using any FTP client. There are several FTP clients available on the Internet for free usage (or as a shareware). Here we will use Filezilla (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/) as an FTP client to connect to our FTP server and then upload these files. Following is a step-by-step guide to the installation process.

You can also use the popular web-based FTP applications Net2FTP at http://www.net2ftp.com or Web2FTP at http://web2ftp.com. Using these packages, you can upload archives from the Internet and they will automatically uncompress the archive. I found it really useful, because now I can always stay in touch with my FTP server without installing any desktop application.

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Wordpress “The Registration Process”

wordpress register

wordpress register

To register your free blog, click on the Get a WordPress Blog Now link at the
top-right corner. You will be redirected to the following page:


wordpress registration form

wordpress registration form

Type your desired username and email address. Please be sure to check the license agreement checkbox as well as the Gimme a blog! checkbox.After providing this information and clicking on the Next button, WordPress will ask for your Blog Domain, Blog Title, and Language as shown in following screenshot. You can also check if it’s a private blog or not. Please notice that you cannot change the blog domain later. So be sure before submitting.

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