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

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

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

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

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

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

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.