Inspired by Darragh’s recent masterclass on how to leave comments on other peoples’ blogs, and guiding Scally through the following process yesterday, I thought I’d post a guide on a similar theme to Darragh’s – how to get your own webspace and install Wordpress on your website.
Though there are a couple of other downable blogging software packages, Wordpress is by far the market leader, powering pretty much all self-hosted blogs at the time of writing. From an Irish point of view, almost all the prominent Irish blogs – Damien, Alexia, Tom, Elly, Twenty Major, Beaut.ie, Sarah, The Chancer, Jazz Biscuit, and so on [I wouldn't dare list myself here!] – are built on Wordpress’s reliable, stable, and very adaptable blogging software. What’s more, even more sites – like Rick O’Shea or Casa Casey Courtney – are hosted on the pre-provided Wordpress.com service, which has a lot of identical features but is not made to be quite as adaptable.
Wordpress is also fantastic for importing blogs you’ve written elsewhere – so if you have an old Blogger account, or maybe a LiveJournal, you can import these posts and they’ll appear as normal entries within your Wordpress. You can even export posts from Wordpress.com and import them into Wordpress on your own webspace if you like, which is very useful if you’re a current Wordpress.com user and want to graduate to hosting your blog yourself. What’s more, if you’ve got your own webspace, you don’t have to worry about exceeding Wordpress.com’s size limits for attachments to your blog, as you’ll have all the space you need to upload files for your posts.
Having your own webspace, meanwhile, has a couple of advantages. Aside from being able to manipulate and tweak software like Wordpress in whatever way you want, you can also enable terrifically handy features like Google Apps, enabling you to enjoy Gmail services at yourdomain.com, as well as using your space as private storage for when you’re on the go. Think about it – why worry about carrying a USB key or an external hard drive that might be damaged in transit, when you can just upload your files to a web server and retrieve them the next time you’re somewhere with the internet – even on your mobile phone? What’s more, you can make your site into something of a personal portal – Elly’s site is a good example for this.
So let’s get to it – where do you start? Well, the first thing to do is secure your web hosting. For this walkthrough I’m going to use the services of Register365.com, the domain registry arm of Hosting365, for no reason other than they’re the web host with whom I’m currently signed up. My current plan – and one I’d recommend to anyone, without any need of disclosure – is the Business Hosting Unix plan, where for €39.99 a year (or €3.99 per month) you get quite a good package for any personal user, including the ability to attach up to 25 different domains to it. Many of the bigger Irish bloggers take their webspace from Blacknight so have a look at their products too and make an informed choice for yourself.
This (hopefully suitable comprehensive) walkthrough will guide you through the process of:
- buying the above package in conjunction with your own .com domain name,
- show you how to set up a MySQL database on which Wordpress will operate,
- how to finish the Wordpress installation and
- extend and manipulate Wordpress to appear just as you want it to.
So, let’s get going with buying your webspace and domain name.
STEP 1 – BUYING YOUR DOMAIN NAME AND WEBSPACE
As stated above, for the sake of this walkthrough I’ll assume you want to buy Register365’s Business Hosting Unix package. This part is quite easy – the most difficult bit is actually choosing the domain you want to buy! For Irish users, you might want to buy yourname.ie – you’ll just need to send on a form of personal ID to the IE Domain Registry to prove your rightful ownership to the domain. The market for generic domains like .com, .net or .org is far more unregulated and buying one is completely automated, so these are easier to get full control of. If you’re looking for a little more inspiration on choosing a domain, try looking here.
For this example, let’s say you want to register a domain to host a blog on gaelic games, and you want the address to be www.lovelyhurling.net. So let’s get to it – go to www.register365.com and enter the domain (without the .ie or .com suffix) that you’re thinking of buying – so in this case, just enter ‘lovelyhurling’.
Fig. 1
(You can click any of the screenshot images in this post to expand them and get a better view.)
From here you can see that while lovelyhurling.com and lovelyhurling.ie have been taken already, the lovelyhurling.net domain is still available! Click on ‘Register’, and choose how many years you wish to buy it for (incidentally, you needn’t worry about having your domain robbed on you before your time is up, by the way; you’ll be given adequate notice before your rental of the domain is up).
Next you’ll be asked for your personal and billing details, and then be brought to a review screen.
Fig. 2
When you’re asked if you’d like to buy any other products, you have your chance to buy your hosting package (if you’re buying a package like the one I recommended above) – so in this case, click ‘Unix Business’ under ‘Additional Products’, choose your billing period (either annual or monthly) and ‘Add Product’ to your shopping list, sticking in your desired username at this point.
After this, you’ll be asked for your payment details, and then that’s it! You now own your own webspace and domain name. Wasn’t that easy? 
Shortly after you finish your transaction, after your payment has been processed (which only takes a few minutes) you’ll be sent a few emails. One of these will contain the details you’ll need to log into your Control Panel.
Fig. 3
The Control Panel is the place where you can administer your server account and do things like creating new subdomains or MySQL databases – an ability that you’ll need in just a moment to get your server ready for Wordpress.
STEP 2 – SETTING UP A MySQL DATABASE
As explained just above, you can set up a MySQL database – as well perform a myriad of other operations – from inside your Control Panel. Don’t worry if, when you log into the Control Panel, most of the icons don’t make very much sense to you, as you generally won’t need to exercise very many of these functions in your everyday internet existence.
Setting up a database isn’t particularly difficult with cPanel (which is the model of control panel that Register365 will, by default, have set up on your server). So before we set it up, I’ll explain very quickly what exactly your database is, and what its role will be, hopefully demystifying the whole concept.
To make a long story short, a Web database is a way of storing your data in a location seperate to your actual site, so that it’s safe from any unauthorised users who might gain unauthorised access to your webspace later on. Hosting companies operate massive database servers, set up for use by all of their customers, which are backed-up almost constantly to make sure no data is lost, and which are made extremely secure so that no hackers should be able to access, corrupt or change any data.
Before you install any web-based Content Management System (or ‘CMS’ – Wordpress is an example of a CMS), the first thing you have to do is create a database where the CMS can store its actual information – essential data like actual blog posts, without which the software would be useless.
So! Now that you have a vague idea of what a database is, it’s time to go creating one. Log into your Control Panel (which you can access either through the link supplied in your email, and use the username and password you were provided with (the details marked in blue in Fig. 3 above).
Once you’re logged into the Control Panel, choose ‘Databases’ on the menu bar at the top, roll your mouse over ‘MySQL’, and then click on the ‘MySQL DB Wizard’ option.
Fig. 4
The next window that will appear will ask you for a name to give your database, and a description. For the sake of simplicity, name your database ‘wordpress’. The description can be a slightly more ‘human’ description, so you can insert something like “Lovely Hurling Wordpress database” – anything that makes it easier for you to identify what your database is doing.
Note that the name of your database will be given a default prefix, so that your database will actually be named somethink like lovelyh_wordpress - this is automatically attached to your database by your hosting company, and is there to make sure that your database has a unique name when it’s saved on your host’s database servers. This is a useful tactic – think, for a moment, if another Register365 customer had created another database the same name as yours – something highly probable when using a name like ‘wordpress’. To prevent any issues with incorrect passwords or other such potential problems, your databases will have a prefix to make sure it’s individually titled, and guaranteeing that no such problems might occur.
You’ll next be asked to create a user, who will have access rights to this database. (A database, like a computer, is only useful if there’s a user who can access it!) You can assign the same names to users as you can to databases, so you can call your user ‘wordpress’ too if you want. Assign a password to this user, making a note of it, and be sure to give the user ‘dba’ access (i.e. full rights to administer the database in question). Your database username will also be given a lovelyh_ (or similar) prefix, so a username ‘wordpress’ becomes lovelyh_wordpress.
Be sure you keep a note of the database name, the username you assign to administer it, and the password for this database user – you’ll need all three when you’re installing Wordpress.
So your database and user have now have been created. Go back to the ‘Databases’ menu, and choose ‘MySQL’ and ‘MySQL DBs’. You’ll be given a master list of all the databases you’ve created, as well as a few other general stats about them. The address for your database server will be given here: it will look something like sql5.hosting365.ie. Make a note of this – this is the fourth detail of the four that you’ll need to get Wordpress up and running.
That’s that bit taken care of! Now that you’ve set up the database, you can press ahead with the final step and give Wordpress the details to access it and finish its installation.
STEP 3 – DOWNLOADING, UPLOADING AND INSTALLING WORDPRESS
Okay – you’ve done the difficult bits; you’ve got your domain name and webspace taken care of, and you’ve created a database that Wordpress is to be allowed to use in saving its content. This, as with the other steps, is quite easy.
As you’ll have read above, Wordpress is the market leader in downloadable blog software, and any major blog that’s hosted independent of the big servers like Blogger will usually be built on the Wordpress system. It’s updated regularly to iron out any bugs and, best of all, it’s completely free and notoriously easy to install.
Before I show you that, though, you’ll need to make sure you have some way of transferring files to your web server by something caled FTP, or File Transfer Protocol. Now, don’t be scared at the acronym; FTP is a very simple concept if you take a few seconds to understand it. If you’ve ever used Windows Explorer, where the left-hand side of the window lists your folders and the right hand side lists the files within a folder, then FTP won’t be a big change for you. FTP is a system almost identical to this, but instead of viewing files on your own computer, you’re merely viewing files on a web server.
Probably the best known free FTP software is SmartFTP (download from www.smartftp.com), although CoffeeCup’s FreeFTP (http://www.coffeecup.com/free-ftp/) does a very similar job and is just as adaptable. If you’re not interested in needing to download new software, though, you needn’t worry! Just launch Windows Explorer and type the address of your address bar (with the ftp:// prefix) into the address bar. Windows will ask you for your username and password and voila, you’ll be working with your FTP server just like you would with your regular files.
The reason you need to be a little familiar with FTP is because once you’ve got Wordpress properly configured, you’ll need to be able to transfer the Wordpress software onto your webspace, using FTP.
So – let’s get to it. Visit www.wordpress.org and download the latest version of the software – or even easier, just go straight to www.wordpress.org/latest.zip where the most recent version will be available to download. Save the zip file to your desktop, open it, and take out the ‘wordpress’ folder – this folder contains everything you’ll need. (Be sure that you don’t extract the zipped folder as it is, or you’ll end up with a folder called Wordpress, containing another folder called ‘wordpress’, which THEN will have the files you need.)
Now, open up your Wordpress folder, and inside it you should find a file called wp-config-sample.php. Click on this file to open it, tell Windows you want to choose the program with which to open it, and then choose Notepad from the list that pops up. The wp-config-sample.php file should now be open (if not, launch Notepad yourself, then click File, Open, and find wp-config-sample.php within the ‘wordpress’ folder).
You’ll see something that looks like this:
Fig. 5
This is where you’ll need to input the database name, username, password, and server address that I asked you to note earlier – each one of these four details will be required within the area highlighted in the screenshot.
- In the field where you’re asked for the database username, delete ‘putyourdbnamehere‘ and enter the full name of your database (including the prefix automatically attached to it – like lovelyh_ or similar).
- In the next line, where you’re asked for the database username, delete ‘usernamehere‘ and insert the database username (again, include the prefix).
- The next line needs the password you assigned to the database user, so delete ‘yourpasswordhere‘ and type your password in. (Don’t worry, this password will be perfectly safe from prying eyes – though it’s no harm to use a password different to your regular one, as you won’t be asked to use this password for anything else.)
- In the fourth row, delete ‘localhost‘ and insert the address of your database server, as noted above (remember? It’s the one that looked something like sql5.hosting365.ie).
Leave the other two rows as they are, save your changes, and exit the file.
Now right-click on the file and click ‘Rename’, or just hit F2 on your keyboard, and change the name of the file to wp-config.php (i.e. removing the ‘-sample‘ from the filename). This is what the file needs to be called before Wordpress can recognise it.
You’re now ready to upload Wordpress to your webspace. So – here’s the big move.
*Edit: I’ve just realised that, contrary to what I’d thought, the domain is not automatically setup within your hosting account once you buy it. So once you’ve logged into your Control Panel, click ‘Domains’, ‘Add New Domain’ and simply type in your domain (without any prefix, such as www. or similar) and hit Return. Follow the screens and your domain will be set up – meaning that on your webspace, a lovelyhurling.net folder will now have been created. – Gav, 12-Aug-08.
Open up your FTP program (again, SmartFTP is recommended), which will usually have the screen split into two halves, with one half showing the files on your web server and with the other showing files on your hard drive. If you haven’t done so already, log into your server using the hostname, username and password that you’ll have received in your email (refer to Fig. 3 above – the details are marked in blue on my screenshot).
Now, open the folder that you want to move your Wordpress files into – we recommend the ‘home’ directory (i.e. the folder named lovelyhurling.net). In the other half of the window, select (but don’t open) the ‘wordpress’ folder – the one in which you saved your renamed wp-config.php file.
Select this folder and simply drag it files over into the other half of the window, into the folder on your web server.
It’ll take a few moments to upload everything, as you’re uploading about 4.5MB of data to your server (that’s about the size of a regular mp3). When all the files have finished copying to your webspace, you’re nearly there! You can delete the Wordpress files from your hard drive now, although it’s a good idea to keep them saved somewhere in case you need to replace anything later on or re-install the software.
Now you’re almost done – there’s just one last thing to do, and Wordpress makes it very easy for you. Simply launch your browser and go to the address of the folder you put the files into, followed by /wordpress/wp-admin/install.php – so, if you’ve put everything into a folder called ‘blog’, then it’s www.lovelyhurling.net/blog/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php. You should see a screen like this:
Fig. 6
Stick in the name for your blog – ‘Lovely Hurling!‘ or something similar – and your email address, and proceed. Once Wordpress has finished formatting your database in the way it likes, you’ll be shown a screen with your new admin password. Take note of this! You can change this password almost immediately, but you won’t be shown it again, so copy and paste the password elsewhere just for a moment.
You should be given a link to log into your new Wordpress installation – so click it, enter the username ‘admin’, and the password that you were given (you can paste this in now). Once you log in, go straight to the ‘Users’ link on the top right hand side, and either set up a new Administrator account for yourself to use, or change the password of the ‘admin’ account from the one that Wordpress gave you, to something more personal and memorable.
Et voila – Wordpress is now installed on your own webspace!
That’s the hardest bit done – you can now click ‘Settings’ and change the title of your blog and give it a description, and change other things like the time zone your blog is set to, and other things.
From here you can also change the exact address you want your blog to appear at – whether you want your blog to appear in what’s called the “home” directory (for example, where the address is just www.lovelyhurling.net without needing anything written after it), or whether you want it to live in a seperate folder (for example, at www.lovelyhurling.net/blog). Go to the Settings menu, and change the Blog Address to wherever you want you blog to be accessed at. Don’t change the Wordpress Address though, as this refers to the folder where your files are being physically stored.
Now that you have the URL decided on, if you have an older blog and want to import the posts from it, just click ‘Manage’ on the main menu, and then ‘Import’. From here it’s quite easy to adopt the posts from any old Blog accounts you might have had – particularly any Wordpress.com accounts you might have had before.
That’s pretty much it – just click ‘Write’ and you can get going with your new posts and spread your word to the world!
STEP 4 – EXTENDING WORDPRESS AND INSTALLING NEW THEMES
Another of Wordpress’s massive strengths is the huge userbase around the world, many of whom are constantly working on new themes and plugins that make Wordpress even more adaptable and customisable. So once Wordpress is up and running, it’s remarkably easy to extend it by installing new plug-ins; for example, you can download programs to help block spam comments on your blog, to help you embed YouTube videos on your entries, or to help you embed a contact form into a page.
Wordpress’s own Plugins page, at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/, is a comprehensive list of the various add-ons that you can get for your blog. Installing them is easy too – just download the plug-in (which, like the initial Wordpress download itself, will be in .zip form), unzip it, and transfer the unzipped folder via FTP into the wp-content/plugins/ folder. Once you’ve transferred it over, you can activate the plugin from the Plugins menu (click the link on the top-right of your screen).
The official Wordpress Theme Viewer (http://themes.wordpress.net/) has hundreds of shiny new templates – 1310 at last count! – for you to download in a similar way to plugins. You can also refine searches on the site to show only themes that match your criteria, so if you have a mental image of a great blog with an orange theme and broken down into two columns, you can easily search the site to find what you’re after. Installation is similar to plugins – just download the theme you want, unzip it, and transfer the unzipped folder (again, via FTP) into the wp-content/themes/ folder.
That’s it – I hope you’ve found this walkthrough easy to use and that it gives you a good idea of how relatively easy it is to get hold of your own webspace and to host your own blog. If you have any feedback, queries, suggestions, or questions about this blog, or want to ask specific questions about installing Wordpress, just add on a comment to this post and I’ll do my best to help you out.
You might also subscribe to the RSS feed of this site to receive automatic updates when new posts are written, and you can also use an RSS feed of the comments for this post if you want to keep track of queries that other readers might leave. This entry is also available as a PDF for you to download and print should you want to do so.
Investing in my own webspace is probably the best investment I’ve ever made – so give it a try, and you’ll see just how liberating it can be to stand on your own two cyberfeet.
1:56 pm on July 22nd, 2008 1
WOW! What a fantastic resource – fair play to you. Brilliant
1:57 pm on July 22nd, 2008 2
@Darragh – thanks! In fairness, you did set the standard as walkthroughs go!
2:01 pm on July 22nd, 2008 3
Great resource for newbies!
2:08 pm on July 22nd, 2008 4
/is proud.
2:17 pm on July 22nd, 2008 5
Oh my God Gav, I swear you’re psychic! What an awesome, mammoth post, well done.
I was just looking around today to see who we should host with, and how I’d go about moving it all over and where to look for nice themes, and what about plug-ins and would I be able to do it all myself and… well you pretty much got it all covered, thanks so much!
PS Thanks for the link
2:19 pm on July 22nd, 2008 6
@Alexia and @Ciara – thank you both!
@Nathalie – not at all, I figured it would be people like yourself or Darragh that would benefit most from something like it! I actually found your current theme elsewhere before (clicky here!), and it really wouldn’t be very difficult at all to export everything over and back.
If you need any help just gimme a shout anyway.
2:39 pm on July 22nd, 2008 7
PS
Quick question – how easy is it to set it up so that the original wordpress.com blog redirects to the new address? And will people who subscribe have to it again?
Sorry and thanks!
2:46 pm on July 22nd, 2008 8
@Nathalie:
Unfortunately Wordpress.com doesn’t offer an automatic way to do either at the minute; the common practice when you’re migrating is to run your export from Wordpress.com, import it to your new server, and post one final update on the old blog saying “We’re moving, find us at (wherever)”.
If you think it appropriate you can delete every post but your final one; realistically it won’t matter very much if your content is still on the old site because if you’re searching on Google for ‘Casa Casey Courtney’, say, then if your domain name is casacaseycourtney.com, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have the own-server entry coming before the Wordpress.com version.
It’s an inconvenience, no doubt, but don’t forget that if you publicise a feed operating through FeedBurner, as opposed to the one supplied by your Wordpress, then you can just edit this one without having to change its address.
2:56 pm on July 22nd, 2008 9
Muchas gracias
I’ll have a family conference with the Eoghan tonight and get the ball rolling 
Thanks again,
X
3:23 pm on July 22nd, 2008 10
Brilliant tutorial – well done!
3:24 pm on July 22nd, 2008 11
Disclaimer on the part of Stephen McCarron – he’s the MD of Hosting365…
Thanks for the kind words though, Stephen, much appreciated!
8:10 pm on July 22nd, 2008 12
I pretty much plan to do this if ever my blog is popular enough to warrant it. You win at comprehensive!
5:12 am on July 23rd, 2008 13
[...] has an excellent tutorial for Wordpress newbies that want to install a self-host setup. Very good [...]
10:51 am on July 23rd, 2008 14
A my father used to say; there is eating and drinking in this post!
Well done.
12:37 pm on July 23rd, 2008 15
Excellent tutorial Gav, I just wish I’d found it a month or two ago! Feel like I had to reinvent the wheel…
Nice one.
8:35 am on July 24th, 2008 16
Nice tutorial! Full, clear and really useful for newbies.
4:01 pm on July 25th, 2008 17
[...] which have been steadily increasing for the past few weeks, even before Gav’s insanely amazing Wordpress post (On that, ain’t he something? He’s so good, thanks for all the nice comments, he’s buzzing [...]
9:27 am on July 28th, 2008 18
[...] or email. Thanks for visiting – Damien.Deserves a post all by itself. Nice guide from Gavin on installing Wordpress on your own site. Only slightly technical abilities are needed. Digg it! | Reddit | Del.icio.us | Stumble [...]
11:04 am on July 28th, 2008 19
Crikey, what a walk through. You should talk to the guys at the WordPress Codex (http://codex.wordpress.org/) about either including some of this material or linking from one of the “how to install” pages.
Any help with documentation is always welcome!
11:49 am on July 28th, 2008 20
*crys*
If only you had published this a month ago!
One point to note – there seem to be permissions issues when uploading data from an old blog to the new version of wordpress (2.6). To get around this, you need to set all permissions on the /uploads folder to 777.
I say this, because it took me about a week to manage it
2:19 pm on July 28th, 2008 21
Thanks to Shin, Grannymar, Debbie and Maxigame!
@Donnacha – I’ll definitely get onto that if you think it’s worth doing; tbh I thought the Codex did a fairly good job but wasn’t very intuitive when it came to creating the MySQL databases and that was all I wanted to cover. I’ll follow your advice though; I reckon you might know a thing or two in that regard!…
@Neil – I wasn’t aware of those issues actually but I’ll see about putting a little bit about permissions into the main post.
10:49 pm on August 9th, 2008 22
Hi! ermm can i use wordpress with my own web design? or does it have some requirements?
11:23 am on August 10th, 2008 23
@Panicos – Wordpress runs on downloadable themes that you install into the wp-content/themes directory.
If you want to use an existing design, you could try to hotlink a new directory inside /themes/ to wherever your current .css file is; or you might like to try and duplicate the .css file from your main template and put it into a new folder.
Be aware, though, that most new versions of Wordpress require a full Wordpress-friendly format theme to work properly, so sadly you’ll probably need to find a similar template to that of your website, and then if you can, you can amend some colours, etc, to suit your theme.
What you may wish to contemplate is having Wordpress installed in another directory and embedding its outputted RSS feed into another page on your website. That way you can have the content appear inside your existing website’s template, but you’ll have to sacrifice the ability to take comments, among other things.
2:06 pm on August 13th, 2008 24
Great tutorial! Thanks for the help
I am unable to edit my theme in the Theme Editor, it says I need to make the file writeable, but I already have done so in FileZilla. Is there any tutorial that can help me sort this out?
2:25 pm on August 13th, 2008 25
@ Eva – there are a couple of reasons why FileZilla may not have made the file writable, but first of all you need to be sure that you’ve performed the correct operation within FileZilla.
In FileZilla, open up the wp-content/themes folder and right-click on the folder containing your theme of choice. Choose properties and make sure that:
1) the file permissions are marked as ‘777′
2) that you apply these changes ‘recursive’, i.e. that you apply the same permissions to every file within that folder.
This should enable your Wordpress installation to amend the files in your theme as appropriate. Just be sure that once you are happy with the changes you have made, that you set the permissions for the folder back to ‘755′, so that they cannot be accessed by any unauthorised users.
This should take care of your problem – if you’d like to learn more about File Permissions and how they work, you can read a great piece on the Wordpress Codex at http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress#File_permissions.
Hope this helps, feel free to comment any more problems!
2:36 pm on August 13th, 2008 26
Thank you very much, that actually took care of everything
Thanks a lot for the very quick feedback!
5:49 pm on August 17th, 2008 27
Thx for the tut!
But I have a problem and I have no clue what I’m doing wrong.
I created the wp-config.php file changed all necessary lines, but now when I’m trying to continue with the Installation the browser is not able to open the install.php file, he finds it but he only shows a clean white site. Perhabs you know what im doin wrong. Thanks
2:50 pm on August 18th, 2008 28
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9:49 pm on August 19th, 2008 29
Are there any variations that i will need to know in order to install on/with mac os10?
9:18 am on August 20th, 2008 30
@ n0rk – this seems to be a common enough problem at the best of times; the safest thing to do is to do another upload of the Wordpress software altogether – i.e.
1) Download latest.zip again
2) Unzip it
3) Upload all the files into the same directory as the current files
4) Make sure you allow your FTP program to overwrite all of the current files.
Often FTP programs will have small blips and miss one file in uploading, and this can result in your blank screen.
If THIS isn’t working then make sure that the details in your wp-config.php file are correct – it might be worth deleting your database and creating a new one with the same name – and make sure all of the file permissions (see the reply to Eva above) are set to 777 for when you’re trying to install.
@ rog – not at all; you’ll just need to make sure that you get an FTP program that works on the Mac. Try download.com and see if you can get an FTP client that works on your OS – after that, it’s exactly the same process.
3:05 pm on August 24th, 2008 31
Thank you so much! I can’t tell you how helpful this was – so many of the ‘explanations’ I find online still seem to require a PHD in computer Science.
Having said that I seem to have stalled at the final and ironically ‘easiest’ step of the install! I’ve downloaded all the files onto the server but cannot seem to get the correct file path when I try to enter it into the web brower. Have you any suggestions at all? I’m not sure if I’ve saved it in the wrong place? It is in the home folder on the server.
thanks!
Sarah
8:19 am on August 25th, 2008 32
hi. how do i embed my blog in my webpage? you see, i want to retain my website look which is a two column and one header style. the other column is for the blog. how do i put it there?
9:22 am on August 25th, 2008 33
@ Sarah – there’s only a couple of things that can really cause this: in your FTP program, what address does it give for the folder you’ve installed Wordpress in? It shouldn’t be TOO difficult to work it out from this. Remember, if the folder for your domain has a ‘public_html’ folder inside it by default, you need to put your content into that folder for it to appear publically accessible. If you like you can email me about this – my address is gav (at) gavreilly (dot) com.
@ Kami – that depends on what CMS you’re using for your website at present. If you use Mambo or Joomla, there are Wordpress components you can download that basically integrate into your existing setup. If not, you might want to install Wordpress in a subdirectory to your main website, and customise your current website so that the RSS feed of your blog entries appears on the right-hand-side of your page, which shouldn’t be too difficult to set up.
8:41 am on August 27th, 2008 34
Great tutorial! I found one mistake though, take a look at this part:
“Simply launch your browser and go to the address of the folder you put the files into, followed by /wordpress/wp-admin/install.php – so, if you’ve put everything into a folder called ‘blog’, then it’s http://www.lovelyhurling.com/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php.”
Shouldn’t it be:
“…into a folder called ‘blog’, then it’s http://www.lovelyhurling.com/BLOG/wp-admin/install.php“
9:11 am on August 27th, 2008 35
@ ZuperZed – Well spotted, thanks for that!
8:33 am on August 30th, 2008 36
Thanks for the help! Although why would you want to install in a directory 2 levels deep from your domain name?
e.g. http://www.lovelyhurling.net/blog/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php
Why not just http://www.lovelyhurling.net/blog/wp-admin/install.php?
1:00 pm on August 30th, 2008 37
@ Afflicted.John – well, I know most people wouldn’t want this, but you have to acknowledge that some people might want to perform multiple installations of Wordpress with different content housed inside different directories and it could be required. Say they putting together a project inside a subdirectory, and needed multiple installations within that?
6:15 am on September 1st, 2008 38
I’ve installed it but I don’t see the option to manage my plugins. Where did I go wrong. Thanks
11:13 am on September 1st, 2008 39
@ Mark – are you sure you’re looking in the right place? Once you’re logged in and you’re looking at your Dashboard, over on the right hand side underneath the Logout / Turbo / Help options, you should see three options marked Settings, Plugins, and Users.
8:06 pm on September 1st, 2008 40
@ Gav Yea I just see Settings and Users I’ve reinstalled multiple times. I don’t know whats going on.
8:14 pm on September 1st, 2008 41
i installed the application through GoDaddy straight through them. Is there anything I need to do different?
8:23 pm on September 1st, 2008 42
@ Mark – that could well be your problem; if you have a version as provided by your web host the chances are they’ll be using a version similar to the one offered for free at Wordpress.org. In cases like this, unless you’ve got full FTP access to your webspace, plug-ins are effectively useless as you’ve got no way of uploading them into your Wordpress installation to begin with.
If you have an account that would allow you to do so, download Wordpress from wordpress.org and upload the files to your webspace yourself as outlined in the tutorial and this will probably sort it.
8:13 am on September 2nd, 2008 43
Thanks for the tutorial. Can you please explain how I can use fantastico to create wordpress. I have seen this in my cpanel.
9:27 pm on September 4th, 2008 44
What a great tutorial!
Really beginner’s step by step guide!
But i have 1 more problem:
when i go for the clue
“Simply launch your browser and go to the address of the folder you put the files into, followed by /wordpress/wp-admin/install.php – so, if you’ve put everything into a folder called ‘blog’, then it’s http://www.lovelyhurling.com/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php.”
How come my browser showed “404 Not Found”?
I can’t understand what gone wrong.
my hosting use cpanel x,
and there’s no such thing as :
*Edit: I’ve just realised that, contrary to what I’d thought, the domain is not automatically setup within your hosting account once you buy it. So once you’ve logged into your Control Panel, click ‘Domains’, ‘Add New Domain’ and simply type in your domain (without any prefix, such as www. or similar) and hit Return. Follow the screens and your domain will be set up – meaning that on your webspace, a lovelyhurling.net folder will now have been created. – Gav, 12-Aug-08.
Could you help please?
9:32 am on September 5th, 2008 45
@ BonZ: when you’re in your FTP server, what address does it give for the folder in question? (Don’t worry – while you might think it’s insecure to give the folder address, it will honestly reveal very little). Most of the people I know who try and find the install.php file end up finding the wrong folder through no fault of their own so perhaps we can find it that way.
Also, does your version of cPanel not have ANY way of adding a new domain to it?
11:58 am on September 5th, 2008 46
i don’t really get what u ask, but maybe this will be the FTP server address?
http://www.asuransikehidupan.com/home/asuransi/blog/wordpress/...(as u guide us)
sorry but i’m a complete newbie on this.
& in my version of cpanel there’s 4 options for domains :
subdomains
addon domains
parked domains
redirects
i also tried to parked my domain (asuransikehidupan.com) in the “parked domains” but cpanel said i can’t park my own main domain.
12:03 pm on September 5th, 2008 47
btw, i just bought a domain & hosting at the same time in the same company. Don’t they usually always connect my domain & hosting automatically?
Thanx before 4 replying
12:05 pm on September 5th, 2008 48
@ BonZ – I’ve had a root around and your blog is already active at http://www.asuransikehidupan.com/blog/wordpress/.
You can log in from http://www.asuransikehidupan.com/blog/wordpress/wp-login.php using the username ‘admin’ and the password that Wordpress will have given you when you finished the installation – if you’ve lost it, delete the database, create a new one with the same name, password and user details, and go to http://www.asuransikehidupan.com/blog/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php where you can start the installation again.
Once you’re logged in, go to Settings and you can change the ‘Blog URL’ to something a little shorter, perhaps getting rid of the ‘/wordpress’ from the address so that your blog could be accessed from http://www.asuransikehidupan.com/blog/.
3:23 pm on September 6th, 2008 49
Hi
I’ve registered my domain name but don’t seem to be able to add it in the control panel – I’m getting a message
“Domain ianxxxxxxx.ie Internal Lookup Result
For your site to become available to the Internet, register or transfer the domain name xxxxxxxx.ie with your local top level domain registrar using the information that we will provide for you upon the activation of your account”
Have you any idea – what this means or what I should do now?
12:16 am on September 7th, 2008 50
@ Ian – that’s the usual message that you are given in cPanel before it adds your domain – I get this message each time before I add a new domain and once I click ‘OK’ from there, the domain is then added to my profile.
Have you checked if this is the case for you?
11:05 am on September 7th, 2008 51
Hi Gav
No it hasn’t been added!
12:03 pm on September 7th, 2008 52
I rang customer 365 support and they added it for me!
10:46 am on September 8th, 2008 53
Hi Gav
Very informative article. I manage to setup wordpress at my domain properly just based on your article.
Thank you for sharing this for free while others selling it for cash.
Thanks again.
2:37 pm on September 8th, 2008 54
Hi Gav, thanx 4 replying me. that link u see must the wordpress i installed by default from the “Site Software” in my cpanel, that’s wordpress v2.2.2
because i lost hope on installing manually.
getting a little bit frustrated here hehehe…
but maybe i will start with this blog instead installing manually. Btw, do you happen to know what’s the advantage of the newer v2.6.1?
And i really don’t know what happen now, but my link changed to http://asuransikehidupan.com/blog/... without the “www” prefix! hahaha… i don’t know what happen. Do you happen to know this kind of issue?
Thanx b4
1:24 pm on September 10th, 2008 55
@ Ian – glad you got it sorted; it would certainly have seemed like a glitch of sorts that the domain wouldn’t automatically add for you. Keep us posted when your blog goes live!
@ Ida – thanks for your kind words.
@ BonZ – What did you find most difficult about doing a manual installation? If you like you can send me an email – gav AT gavreilly DOT com – and I’ll see if I can help you out with a manual installation, which really isn’t very hard once you have the wp-config.php file properly amended. The new versions of Wordpress – v2.6.2 came out this morning – are mostly bug fixes, along with some minor security patches.
As regards your blog address, on the Settings page inside your Wordpress installation you should be able to change the address of your blog, so just be sure to include the www. there, and this should make your blog appear with the prefix again.
1:22 am on September 12th, 2008 56
Hello there,
i really appreciate your article, which i did follow step by step. But the problem am experiencing, which am also getting frustrated about is that:
After installing the wordpress,and tried logging into my wordpress admin area @(http://healthygist.com/wp-admin/install.php) all i get to see is a plain white page.
I dont know what am doing wrong, could you please rescue me on this.
Thanks.
9:09 pm on September 13th, 2008 57
Thanks a lot for the guide. Helped a lot.
9:11 pm on September 13th, 2008 58
[...] post to get up and running. First I’d like to thank Gav at http://www.everydayiselectionday.com for this amazingly helpfull guide on installing WordPress. Without it I wouldn’t have managed to get [...]
5:59 am on September 15th, 2008 59
Thanks Gavin, this really did help heaps with my set up. That said… I don’t think I’ve done it right. When I get all the way to one of the final steps (where you change the blog URL but not the wordpress URL)… I do this, but for some reason there’s nothing there at that new URL that I place?
For example, my wordpress URL is http://aussie-jobs-online.com/aussiejobs/wordpress but I want it to appear at http://aussie-jobs-online.com/... but when I enter that into the “settings” page, altho it says it’s saved, it doesn’t seem to change anything. Any ideas?
9:52 am on September 15th, 2008 60
@ Adebowale – this is a more common problem than you might think; the most common cause is that not all of the files from the Wordpress installation were uploaded correctly.
To make sure that you’ve got everything, just open up your FTP program again and try to upload the entire installation. This should usually take care of everything – if not, get back to me.
@ James – thanks, best of luck with your site and if you have any more questions, feel free to return.
@ Burgo – As a general rule you can’t go higher than the directory you have placed your Wordpress folder in; essentially in your example the highest address you can give it (that Wordpress can apply) would be aussie-jobs-online.com/aussiejobs.
If you want to shorten the address any further than that, then I’d suggest you set up a URL redirect on your server (if you’re using cPanel, go to ‘Redirect URL’ on the cPanel homepage, and point ‘index.html’ to ‘aussiejobs/index.php’). You might also consider writing a quick index.html file to store in your root directory, which again would redirect to your blog directory – click here for more details on that.
10:35 pm on September 15th, 2008 61
Awesome, thanks Gav I’ll look into that. Really appreciate you taking so much time to help the noobs like me here
7:09 am on September 23rd, 2008 62
Thanks a bunch. You made it possible for a newbie like me to get a blog up and running on my existing website in double quick time.Excellent resource. Thanks again. John
12:06 pm on September 23rd, 2008 63
Not at all, John, happy to be of service. Be sure to let us know how you get on with your blog.
2:48 pm on October 1st, 2008 64
We are thinking of installing wordpress on our existing website, What are the the OS requirements for Wordpress? Linux (which flavor), Windows, Unix are preferred and supported? Any help will be much appreciated.
Thanks!
2:26 pm on October 2nd, 2008 65
@ Vanita – Wordpress runs on Unix-based web systems; there’s no specific requirements for the machine you’re installing it FROM. Any web servers that can handle PHP scripts (which I think is everything BUT Windows) will work fine.
3:45 pm on October 9th, 2008 66
Thanks Gav!
4:30 pm on October 10th, 2008 67
Thanks a lot!
2:25 am on October 13th, 2008 68
Hi,
Cool… thanks a lot – Just what I needed…
BTW… What about settings permissions on dirs? or is that only for some plugins?
Peter
Denmark
10:44 am on October 13th, 2008 69
@ Vanita and Kaiser – thanks for your appreciation!
@ Peter – in some cases, some plug-ins need to have access to your directories and make changes to them as needed. The easiest way to make sure they are all okay is to open your FTP program and enter the wp-content folder. Open the ‘plugins’ folder, select everything inside it, right-click and set permissions to ‘755′. Then go out of the plugins folder, right-click on it, and set the permissions as ‘644′.
That way your folder is safe from outside intrusion but your plugins will all have the ability to amend themselves in accordance with any settings changes you might make.
5:54 am on October 14th, 2008 70
Hey Gav,
great tut till i got stuck
not sure what im wrong!
i got to the part where you say to add “wp-admin/install.php ”
when i click enter takes me to the hosting site
any ideas?
thanks in advance for teh help!
6:09 am on October 14th, 2008 71
i re uploaded everything.. think its working..
9:27 am on October 14th, 2008 72
@ Fark – That’s exactly what I was going to suggest. The vast bulk of problems during installation are caused by faulty FTP uploads. If you have any more issues, just come back and ask.
2:16 am on October 22nd, 2008 73
My domain hosting Control Panel has a feature that downloads the most current version of Wordpress and installs it automatically. Would you recommend this instead of the manual installation you show in your post? Please email your reply to my email above.
Great tutorial by the way.
Greg
9:24 am on October 23rd, 2008 74
Very good post Gav,
I believe some people touched on it, but I’m not quite sure so I have this question. A few people asked about installing wp on an existing site, embedding etc.
Is it possible to add wordpress onto a php website as an additional part. For instance the site will remain as is but people could click on the wp part as another part of the site.
My reason : wp is so easy to work with, in oppose to sites where you have to work on every page for every little thing.
It’s either that or having the whole site converted to wordpress, but loss of pr, traffic etc is an issue.
Thanks
7:59 pm on October 23rd, 2008 75
@ Don – It’s no problem at all! The only thing you might need to bear in mind is that your /blog folder might look a little different because the stylesheet being used on the current site won’t work with Wordpress. If you can find a theme for Wordpress similar to that on your current site, you can go ahead and install it.
The only thing to be aware of is that you should install Wordpress into a sub-directory, usually /blog. Setting up a second MySQL database shouldn’t be a problem after that!
5:45 pm on October 28th, 2008 76
Very good post thanks,
very detailed, Just what I needed
regards
6:16 pm on October 28th, 2008 77
Excellent resource.
Thanks again.
Keep up the good work
12:07 pm on November 1st, 2008 78
Hi, Excellent resource. Many thanks for posting it.
I followed it all fine onto my existing domain which previously had my index.html directly linked to wordpress.com blog
i’ve added mysql,etc to my domain, and named the relevant folder ‘wordpress’ and put it into my domain’s oldbike.eu folder.
- but when i go to http://oldbike.eu/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php
i’m totally confused by the error page that comes up.
i’ve tried removing my original index.html completely,
redirecting index.html to wordpress.org,
re-ftp-ing wordpress folder twice,
but nothing seems to work.
I’ve linked my domain back to wp-com blog for now.
My intention was to have my domain index.html directed to a wp.org blog page and then use that self-hosted blog to offer mutliple links to my different wp.com blogs
colin
1:24 am on November 2nd, 2008 79
Hi,
This is a superb guide, I’ve found it incredibly useful. But when I upload it onto my server its stored under “domainname.com/wordpress/” and not under the domain name itself. How do I ensure that wordpress software is accessible from the domain name?
I’ve tried uploading all the files inside the Wordpress folder but it tells me I dont have permissions.
Excellent guide once again.
would you be kind enough to email me at garethplummer @ yahoo.com
2:32 am on November 2nd, 2008 80
[...] installed WordPress on my Website today and moved my blogger posts over here. Glad I found this tutorial here on how to go about [...]
11:11 pm on November 2nd, 2008 81
@ Colin – It seems your SQL file is slightly corrupted so the easiest thing to do is delete your SQL database and create another one with exactly the same name, and with the same username access details. If you go back to the install.php file then, all should be well.
@ Gareth – Email reply sent.
12:14 am on November 4th, 2008 82
[...] – an excellent beginner’s ‘walkthrough’ at everydayiselectionday.com. Find it here. Tags: buying a domain, install Wordpress, web [...]
8:44 pm on November 5th, 2008 83
Thank You for this wonderful tutorial, but when I type in the address of the folder I put the files into I get this:
Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.
Any help please.
Thank You,
8:49 pm on November 5th, 2008 84
@ Darrin – Did you set up a MySQL database as outlined in step 2 above, and then edit your wp-config-sample.php file as outlined in step 3? Remember you have to edit your wp-config-sample.php and then rename it to wp-config.php.
3:54 pm on November 6th, 2008 85
Gav,
Yes I followed all the steps closely but I was thinking I might have messed up the Description name and put my username there instead. Would that make a difference?
Thank You for your time.
4:04 pm on November 6th, 2008 86
@ Darrin – Yes, that’s a vital error. If your wp-config.php file doesn’t have the correct entries in it, Wordpress simply won’t know how to use your database, and can’t operate without it.
Have a look at http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php to get details on how to correctly fill-in your wp-config.php file – once this is done, the install.php file should then load correctly.
5:08 pm on November 6th, 2008 87
I will do that Gav, Thanks so much for your time and effort.
6:55 pm on November 6th, 2008 88
Well I keep getting the same error message I have no idea what it could be.
Can there be another reason?
All Im doing is uploading the Wordpress folder via SmartFTP to my GoDaddy account.
11:29 pm on November 10th, 2008 89
I never had a tutorial like this for my installation. Thank you, great work !
Better than a book
11:31 pm on November 10th, 2008 90
Wordpress is so easy to understand and to use, but this tutorial is the best !
8:24 pm on November 12th, 2008 91
Hey Gav,
Thanks for this. I completely flailed through this process last night and wish I had read this first. I do have a question remaining though.
When I go to install plug-ins, it asks me for an API key? When I go to the WordPress help forums, I see this question but the responses are to look under the “Users” tab, and a picture that show the key right at the top of the page. When I do this, I see no such key listed there. Where can I find it so I can use plug-ins? Thanks again!
8:38 pm on November 12th, 2008 92
Hey Sean,
If you have a Wordpress.com account, just head along to http://dashboard.wordpress.com/wp-admin/profile.php and it should be written right under the ‘Your Profile and Personal Options’ heading at the top of the page!
8:39 pm on November 12th, 2008 93
@ Sean – I should underline that you do need a Wordpress.com account to get an API key. It’s easy to sign up though, and you don’t need to commit to actually having a blog hosted on Wordpress.com if you sign up with them!
2:15 am on November 13th, 2008 94
Thanks Gav, that was the step I was missing. I incorrectly assumed that I automatically created an account when I downloaded the WordPress software and installed it on my domain. Thanks again!
2:22 pm on November 14th, 2008 95
excellent stuff
7:49 pm on November 14th, 2008 96
Hmmm it appears when I set up my GoDaddy account I had IIE v.6 when I need to have v.7 for PHP support.
Gonna cancel account and change my setup for v.7. Hope this works.
7:51 pm on November 14th, 2008 97
@ Darrin – if I’d realised you didn’t have PHP support I could have diagnosed that problem much quicker!
Having that capability should take care of it once and for all.
5:17 pm on November 26th, 2008 98
[...] Gav’s install info [...]
6:49 pm on December 3rd, 2008 99
fantastic, thanks
11:57 pm on December 6th, 2008 100
Thats very nice information ! Thanks!
8:33 am on December 7th, 2008 101
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5:04 am on December 14th, 2008 102
Thanks for the information.. Easy for me done with this tutorial
6:20 pm on December 25th, 2008 103
hello! this write up is very helpful and informative. I think this is the best document i’ve read on how to install wordpress on my host server. Unfortunately, I’m having issues with the installation. I’m getting an error code when I launch /wordpress/wp-admin/install.php. I deleted the database and the uploaded files in my FTP server and will do it again. I hope this will work. Just a quick question, in my cPanel, I didn’t see anything that shows Add Domain. I only see Parked Domains, Addon Domains, Subdomains and Subdomain Stats. The top portion of the cPanel shows Welcome MYDOMAINNAME.COM! Does this mean that my hosting provider added my domain already? I would really appreciate your response. Thank you!
7:01 pm on December 25th, 2008 104
Hi doi, hope you’re having a pleasant Christmas! It certainly sounds like your hosting company have already automatically added your domain to your panel so all of that should be fine. What is the error you’re receiving – is it a 404? Please do let me know.
12:59 pm on December 26th, 2008 105
Hi,
When I tried to copy the wordpress folder over to my home directory the files do not copy over and it says in smartFTP log
[12:57:16] SIZE wordpress-2[1].7
[12:57:16] 550 wordpress-2[1].7: No such file or directory
[12:57:16] The operation has been added to the Transfer Queue. Check the Transfer Queue for the status.
1:03 pm on December 26th, 2008 106
Figured it out!
5:38 pm on December 29th, 2008 107
I did the install, got a password but it will not allow me into the wordpress Aministration page. I get the following page.
This error (HTTP 403 Forbidden) means that Internet Explorer was able to connect to the website, but it does not have permission to view the webpage.
I know I am using the right password since I just copied and pasted. I have reinstalled everything including the database three times and the same problem keeps happening. Anyone know what I am doing wrong?
Mike
11:26 pm on December 29th, 2008 108
Hi Mac; the problems that you’re having aren’t related to the password you’re using. Rather, a 403 error means that your web server is not configured properly.
First of all, try saving a blank text file on your local machine with the name “x.htaccess” (where .htaccess is the file extension, where .txt would usually be). Then, move this to the root directory of your webspace, and rename it to remove the x, i.e. to name the file “.htaccess” with nothing before the dot. Right-click this file in your FTP program and set the FTP permissions to 755 and see if this works.
If this doesn’t work, select EVERYTHING in your Wordpress installation and set the permissions to 755 for ALL of it to see if this allows traffic to go to your wp-login.php file.
7:37 pm on December 31st, 2008 109
Gav, hello! This is the error message I get when I try to create my database and add a user to the database.
Perl: $dbh = DBI->connect(“DBI:mysql:doispeak_wordpress:localhost”,
“doispeak_doi”,”");
$dbh=mysql_connect (“localhost”, “doispeak_doi”,
“”) or die(‘Cannot connect to the database because: ‘ . mysql_error());
mysql_select_db (“doispeak_wordpress”);
I’m not sure if I am causing this problem and if this is really an error message? Please help!
Happy New Year!
9:03 pm on December 31st, 2008 110
Doi – it looks like your webspace doesn’t support PHP – can you check that out and confirm if your webspace does?
5:49 am on January 1st, 2009 111
Gav, Hello there! I just wanna say thank you for all your help!
I haven’t contacted my hosting provider about the PHP thingy yet.
Honestly, I don’t know anymore what I’m doing. Everything is a mess with the files on my server.
When I go to http://www.doispeaks.com/blog/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php it shows this message:
Not Found
The requested URL /blog/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.63 OpenSSL/0.9.8b mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at http://www.doispeaks.com Port 80
If I go to http://www.doispeaks.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php it shows this message:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in /home/doispeak/public_html/blog/wp-includes/post.php on line 2987
I’m using Filezilla. Should I upload Wordpress on the public_html directory? or shall I create a new directory? Also when I tried to delete wordpress from Filezilla and uploaded it again, there are a couple of files that failed to transfers correctly. I’m thinking of contacting my provider to reset everything if I no longer have any choices. But I’m not sure if that’s even possible. I bought my domain name and hosting service from the same company.
What do you think I should do?
5:52 am on January 1st, 2009 112
BTW, I think my Wordpress files are inside the public_html directory and under the “blog” folder. I tried this… http://www.doispeaks.com/public_html/blog/wp-admin/install.php and it gave me the 404 Not Found error.
5:28 pm on January 1st, 2009 113
Hi Doi,
Basically it looks like you’re just having trouble figuring out which directory your Wordpress installation is filed in. What many people are never told is that the public_html file IS your root directory as far as anyone else is concerned – other folders aside from your public_html one are ones that you can store things privately in and not have them accessible by the public. When accessing public content, a user is automatically directed to your public_html folder, without you needing to state it. If you DO state it in a URL, you’ll get a 404.
Anyway, I’ve had a little look and I see that your wordpress folder is inside your public_html – so first of all I’d recommend that you just rename the ‘wordpress’ folder as ‘blog’ or something a little more userfriendly. Either way, if a user visits http://www.doispeaks.com, they’ll be sent to whatever’s in your public_html folder. So, rename your wordpress folder as ‘blog’, and then visit http://www.doispeaks.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php and it’ll be as easy as that!
2:50 pm on January 3rd, 2009 114
Thank you very much for all the help. My site is working now. Its really confusing to set it up especially if all of these stuff are new to me. Anyway, Happy New Year to you! Thanks again!!!
8:46 pm on January 3rd, 2009 115
Hi Gav,
Do you have any idea how to install wordpress using the control panel at:
https://www.websitesettings.com/pages/Login.jsp
All of the info regarding how to install on control panels has no familiarity at all on this company’s interface!
Is is it using mySql or what?
10:59 pm on January 3rd, 2009 116
Hi aunt bucky, unfortunately I have no idea what software that’s using; I’ve never come across a control panel login page like that! Once you get into it, I would imagine that it – like most hosts – will offer a MySQL database (even if not specifically referred to by name), and it’s not a massively different process to create a new database; really the interface with a control panel for installing Wordpress is minimal and is entirely limited to creating your database.
3:30 pm on January 4th, 2009 117
[...] the way, I really found this site useful… http://www.everydayiselectionday.com/2008/07/22/a-beginners-guide-to-installing-wordpress/ despite the error message I’m getting. Thought I’d share this. Uhhmm.. Booooooyyyy!!! [...]
6:12 pm on January 6th, 2009 118
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7:33 pm on January 19th, 2009 119
Hi there, thank you very much for this! I have followed this exactly but still having problems. All the files are uploaded however when i try to point my browser at the folder to install wordpress it doesn’t work
I don’t know what to do! I appreciate it if you have any suggestions. many thanks, mike
8:12 pm on January 19th, 2009 120
Hi Michael, can you give me your domain name and the URL of the wordpress folder on your site?
6:00 pm on January 28th, 2009 121
After installing Wordpress (looked to be successful) I log in as admin but the URL it is trying to use comes up TWICE
(http://www.entrepreneurialteams.com/blog/http://www.entrepreneurialteams.com/blog/wp-login.php )
I cannot figure out why or where to change this so it only brings up ONE address in the URL!!??!
I’ve tried installing a few times moving the wordpress files to different directories, but always get the same results…
E HAys
10:42 pm on January 28th, 2009 122
Hi swishersweet. Unfortunately I have no idea – what link are you clicking on that’s bringing up the false link? There may be a slight coding error in the template you’re using that has the blog url code triggered twice instead of once, but other than that I’m stumped!
8:10 pm on February 1st, 2009 123
A great post! For a “newbie” blogger/website owner, this is very informative!. I am having trouble with my site at the moment, but if i need to start again, I now know what to do!
thanks!
8:40 pm on February 14th, 2009 124
Gav – thanks so much for taking the time, if finally feels I might be getting there. But I can’t seem to change the name of the file from wp-config-sample.php. to take sample out. Any ideas? When I right click on the file I don’t get rename as an option.
12:04 pm on February 15th, 2009 125
Hi Pauline, what program are you using to rename the file? Try selecting the file and pressing F2 which should allow you to rename it. If this doesn’t work, download the file to your hard drive, rename it there, and upload it again. If you need any guidance give me a shout – gav AT gavreilly DOT com.
12:35 am on February 20th, 2009 126
you saved me hours of work!
kudos!
3:31 pm on February 20th, 2009 127
Hi Gav,
I’m a newbie to Wordpress and greatly appreciate your tutorial and advice.
I have my domain registered with hosting365 and have followed your instructions to the letter, but I still get a 404 when I try to install.
I used Filezilla to upload the wordpress files into the ‘rochabravaholiday.com’ directory. The files are in a subdirectory called ‘wordpress’. The install address is http://www.rochabravaholiday.com/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php
I have deleted the wordpress file on a couple of occasions and re-loaded fresh versions of the wordpress download, all to no avail. I’m afraid to count the amount of hours I’ve spent trying this. Your advice would be very much appreciated.
Kind regards
Liam
3:37 pm on February 20th, 2009 128
Hi Liam,
From having a quite root around on your site it looks like either there’s accidentally been an error in the folder you’ve put things in, or your server permissions aren’t allowing you to view the files.
In your FTP program right-click on your wordpress/ folder and set the properties for it (and for all the files inside this – “applying recursive” – this should be an option unter the properties) to ‘777′, basically meaning that they can be seen and read by all users. Then try to go back to the install.php URL and see if it works.
if that doesn’t work, can I ask if you’re using a Business Hosting Windows package on Register365? Wordpress doesn’t work on a Windows package – it needs a Unix one – but on your Control Panel (which you can log into from rochabravaholiday.com) you can convert your Windows package to a Unix one.
4:13 pm on February 20th, 2009 129
Thank you for such a quick response, Gav.
I don’t have access to my FTP programme currently so I can’t try that as yet.
My package is Basic Windows 2006. I have another non-wordpress website on this platform. Will there be conflicts if I change across to the Unix platform?
Rgds
Liam
5:39 pm on February 20th, 2009 130
Liam, that depends – does your other platform use a similar CMS? If so, what?
10:20 pm on February 20th, 2009 131
Gav, it was created in Dreamweaver and uploaded to hosting365.
Liam
10:35 pm on February 20th, 2009 132
Liam – then it shouldn’t be a problem, you should be able to convert to the Business Hosting Unix platform without a hitch, assuming your file endings are all .htm/.html or similar.
2:48 pm on February 21st, 2009 133
Thanks again, Gav.
I have requested a trasfer to the Unix platform, so, hopefully, things will go well from here. I’ll let you know!
Regards
Liam
10:27 pm on February 26th, 2009 134
Hi Gav,
I could not seem to get the proper web blog page to come out. I have clicked the above link for the blow and all I see are the files in my wordpress directory. Please help.
I have installed it in my localhost for now for testing.
Regards,
Sam
10:36 pm on February 26th, 2009 135
Hi Gav,
Just for additional info. I have installed the WordPress in the opensolaris environment.
Regards,
Sam
10:39 pm on February 26th, 2009 136
Hi Sam,
I’m not totally familiar with opensolaris – does it suppose PHP programming, or is it Apache compatable?
3:22 pm on February 27th, 2009 137
Hi Gav,
Yes, it does. Also, additional info. My development environment is running inside a Sun xVirtualBox with Opensolaris 2008.05.
I also have NetBeans 6.5 as my IDE for PHP and MySQL.
Regards,
Sam
3:51 pm on February 27th, 2009 138
Sam, can you email me the link to your domain where you’re currently looking? Send it to gav AT gavreilly DOT com, cheers.
4:07 pm on February 27th, 2009 139
Hi Gav,
Sorry, I don’t have the actual domain. I have the setup locally on my laptop via Sun xVirtualBox.
I read somewhere that I have to add the home.php to the index.php of my site and change some kind of apache .htaccess to add it. I have not done this. Do you think this might be the issue?
Regards,
Sam
4:10 pm on February 27th, 2009 140
Sam – that’s exactly your problem so! The .php files will only truly load correctly once installed on an actual web server.
The index.php file will work without any amendments once live; when live you’ll need to create a blank .htaccess file (easiest way to make one is to save a blank text file as x.htaccess, then upload it and rename to remove the x – then set the properties to 755) so as to allow Wordpress automatically change your permalinks preferences and so on.
4:18 pm on February 27th, 2009 141
Hi Gav,
Where would I put the .htaccess file? I have just revised the httpd.conf file and added the home.php on the DirectoryIndex. What do I put on the .htaccess file after I create it? Please advuce.
Regards,
Sam
4:22 pm on February 27th, 2009 142
Sam – into the root directory, in the same place as the wp-admin, wp-content, wp-includes folders and so on.
4:25 pm on February 27th, 2009 143
Hi Gav,
Thanks. What do I put in it? Please advice.
Regards,
Sam
4:27 pm on February 27th, 2009 144
Sam – a blank file, placed into the root folder where the Wordpress files reside. It should be in the same folder as the wp-config.php file.
4:34 pm on February 27th, 2009 145
Hi Gav,
Thanks for the help. I think it is working now. I have clicked the link – visit site on the top left of the dashboard and the home.php that I have created showed up on the directory that I have specified (http://localhost/test/myblogs/.
Now, I have another one if you don’t mind. I have copied the sandbox theme to wp-content/themes/ and trying to apply, but I am not getting any luck. Can you please help me again?
Regards,
Sam
4:39 pm on February 27th, 2009 146
Sam – I would imagine that the preview is not working properly because you’re using a fixed home.php file that isn’t part of the Wordpress setup. Are you sure that the template isn’t actually being applied, but just now showing up in the preview?
If that’s not the solution I’m afraid I can’t help you any further…
4:49 pm on February 27th, 2009 147
Hi Gav,
Yes, home.php is not a part of WordPress setup. I just copied my index.php and created a home.php just to test.
The theme does not get applied at this time and not showing up on the Appearance Themes. I have followed the steps you have above to apply the theme, but not getting it. Please advice.
Regards,
Sam
4:54 pm on February 27th, 2009 148
Hi Gav,
Do I need to move the home.php on the sandbox to where I have my home.php that I have created (/root/test/myblogs)?
Regards,
Sam
4:56 pm on February 27th, 2009 149
Sam – as I said, if my initial suggestion wasn’t fixing it then I’m afraid I’m all out of ideas.
5:03 pm on February 27th, 2009 150
Hi Gav,
I am not sure what you mean. I can delete the home.php that I have created and replace it with home.php from sandbox theme.
The sandbox theme now is located at /wp-content/themes/sandbox. Is there a way to point the WordPress to here for the theme to show up on the Appearance Page.
Sorry, for asking you this again.
Regards,
Sam
5:10 pm on February 27th, 2009 151
Sam – Hang on, am I reading you correctly? It looks as if you’re copying files from the template folder into the root directory. Don’t do this; the only files you should ever manually edit in the Wordpress root are the .htaccess file and the wp-config.php file.
Try deleting your home.php from the root, and make sure that the index.php file in the same folder is the original as supplied in the Wordpress installation folder. Also, make sure that that the sandbox theme folder still has all the original files that came with it. Then when you go into the Appearance -> Themes folder, the theme should show up. If it’s not appearing right now then it’s probable that either the index.php file (which is different to the one from the main Wordpress index) or the style.css file is missing from the sandbox folder.
5:24 pm on February 27th, 2009 152
Hi Gav,
Okay, I have erased my home.php file from my root (/test/myblogs/) and the index.php that came from sandbox is still in the directory (/test/myblogs/wp-content/themes/sandbox/). It is saying that it is the stylesheet is missing. I see that style.css is in the same directory as index.php. Yes, the wordpress index.php or myblogs index.php is different from the sandbox index.php file.
Regards,
Sam
11:51 am on February 28th, 2009 153
Hi Gav
I successfully transferred to a Unix platform but when I try to launch Wordpress I get the following page:
>
WordPress
‘.__(‘Already Installed’).’
‘.__(‘You appear to have already installed WordPress. To reinstall please clear your old database tables first.’).’
‘);} switch($step) { case 0: case 1: // in case people are directly linking to this display_header(); ?>
ReadMe documentation at your leisure. Otherwise, just fill in the information below and you\’ll be on your way to using the most extendable and powerful personal publishing platform in the world.’), ‘../readme.html’); ?>
error) ) wp_die($wpdb->error->get_error_message()); display_header(); // Fill in the data we gathered $weblog_title = isset($_POST['weblog_title']) ? stripslashes($_POST['weblog_title']) : ”; $admin_email = isset($_POST['admin_email']) ? stripslashes($_POST['admin_email']) : ”; $public = isset($_POST['blog_public']) ? (int) $_POST['blog_public'] : 0; // check e-mail address if (empty($admin_email)) { // TODO: poka-yoke die(‘
‘.__(“ERROR: you must provide an e-mail address.”).’
‘); } else if (!is_email($admin_email)) { // TODO: poka-yoke die(‘
‘.__(‘ERROR: that isn’t a valid e-mail address. E-mail addresses look like: username@example.com‘).’
‘); } $wpdb->show_errors(); $result = wp_install($weblog_title, ‘admin’, $admin_email, $public); extract($result, EXTR_SKIP); ?>
admin
‘.__(‘Note that password carefully! It is a random password that was generated just for you.’).”; ?>
Your advice would be appreciated.
Regards
Liam
12:04 pm on February 28th, 2009 154
Hi Liam,
One of the other commentors had this issue aswell – it looks like your server doesn’t support PHP, or has had its PHP support turned off. You can get more details on that from the Wordpress.org support pages.
2:18 pm on February 28th, 2009 155
Many thanks, Gav. I’ll check it out.
Liam
9:01 am on March 22nd, 2009 156
[...] The documentation is certainly extensive, but I found it far from useful. You find yourself getting sent from one page to another to another to another, without always finding exactly what you want. The best one-stop tutorial I found is Gav’s Guide. [...]
2:09 pm on March 26th, 2009 157
Thanks this really helpful. I had having to depend on fantastico.
11:30 pm on March 30th, 2009 158
Thanks a billion. Worked like a charm.
12:30 pm on March 31st, 2009 159
Yeah its not easy for a newbie to install wordpress. Frankly speaking even for a little bit experienced persons also find it difficult to some extent in the beginning:)
Thanks for such an informative resource. Thanks:)
7:15 am on April 3rd, 2009 160
Hi Gav,
Thanks a lot for this brilliant guide … unfortunately when I set up my MySQL Databases I am not able to find anywhere the database address (as you suggested … it should look something like sql5.hosting365.ie.) … where can I find it??? Can I finish the Wordpress installation without it?
Thanks, JT
8:10 pm on April 7th, 2009 161
What a great guide! I’ve been looking for something like this on the internet for a while! Thanks for taking the time to write all this up.
7:33 am on April 24th, 2009 162
THAAAANK YOU
..everything worked out fine..the only bug I have is that for whatever reason only the theme that I uploaded first shows up. If I upload another one and delete the former the page will just be white/blank…
10:39 pm on April 29th, 2009 163
hello,
thanks for the post, really helps a lot
im a newbie in installing wordpress in my new domain.
9:15 pm on May 1st, 2009 164
[snip]
9:21 pm on May 1st, 2009 165
Dominic,
Don’t use this site to shill your wares. Don’t say that you can pay $10/yr for a domain, and get free hosting, and then say it shouldn’t cost you any more than $89/yr. Nothing in this blog post costs any more than about €50/yr; I run eleven websites off one package that costs me €40/yr plus whatever the domain costs, and there’s room for fourteen more.
Get a life.
Gav
7:49 pm on May 5th, 2009 166
Hi Gav
How do I just get my domain to redirect to my wordpress blog?
Thanks
Ian
10:07 pm on May 5th, 2009 167
Ian – go to your control panel, find the option where you can redirect URLs to other addresses; and have all traffic to “/index.html” back to your Wordpress.
Best of luck with your election.
3:29 pm on May 13th, 2009 168
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8:57 am on May 26th, 2009 169
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12:15 am on May 29th, 2009 170
Thank you!!! This was VERY helpful!
8:54 pm on June 4th, 2009 171
I am interested to find out if your product is SEction 508 compliant (1194.22) or if it has been coded to comply with the US Access Board Technical Standards.
5:53 am on June 5th, 2009 172
HEY GAV,
THANKS FOR THE POST, YOUR POST IS OF GREAT HELP FOR BEGINNERS.
KEEP UP THE GOODWORK.
SUMIT JAIN
7:50 pm on June 9th, 2009 173
This helps, just starting out with implementing blogs on a website for a customer, but I’ll first try it on my own website and see if it runs smoothly.
5:29 pm on June 19th, 2009 174
Hi,
Great tutorial, just one little problem. If i simply change the blog address to http://www.anatrofin.com instead of http://www.anatrofin.com/blog, I don’t see my blog, just the plesk panle domain default page. And the Wordpress indications are too complicated for me
Please help me
Thanks
5:37 pm on June 19th, 2009 175
Hi Ana, what you should do is use your FTP program to go into your root directory (i.e. the folder in which you have the ‘blog’ folder placed), and remove any files called “index.html”, “index.php” or “index.htm”. The problem is that your server will automatically show you these pages first, before it looks at Wordpress’s instructions.
If you delete any files with those names and still have problems, let me know!
5:48 pm on June 19th, 2009 176
Now it’s worse…….it gives the Apache 2 HTTP Server Test Page, a new and exciting view
)
Thanks for the quick answer btw.
7:28 pm on June 21st, 2009 177
Big question here……….is there any way I can get back that index.php file? Because now it’s harder for me to acces the control panel of plesk, and this apache page is annoying.
Thank you,
Ana
7:48 pm on June 21st, 2009 178
Ana – usually there should be some page also called login.html or possibly a folder called /cp/ where you can log into your control panel. If not, then the only way of getting it back which I can think of is creating a subdomain which should automatically have a login page for you; you could keep the subdomain address a secret and use that to login.
Go back to the Wordpress ‘redirect’ function and change the address to something else, and then back again, and see if it works. If that still isn’t working, you should investigate to see if your Wordpress installation (or your server) has a file called “.htaccess”. This is basically a blank text file with an usual name, which allows Wordpress to make whatever changes to the server you ask it to. Have a look at comment #108 above for details on how to try this.
Either way, if the Wordpress option lets you down, there are two options left. Once is to see if your Control Panel has a “URL Redirect” function. If it does, redirect all traffic from “index.html” to “blog/”.
If your server doesn’t have this capability, then the second option is for you should create a basic HTML file called “index.html” which redirects to “http://www.anatrofin.com/blog/”. You can find simple information on how to do this at http://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/html-redirect.html. It’s a very simple solution if the automatic Wordpress feature doesn’t work for you.
7:52 pm on June 21st, 2009 179
Thank you again. I will try them, to see what works.
5:48 pm on June 23rd, 2009 180
Thanks for this detailed tutorial,i hope i can manage to follow ur instructions.Congrats.
7:29 pm on July 3rd, 2009 181
Hey Gav, thanks muchly for the guide. Helped me install it into my website. The only thing that I got wrong was dragging all the wordpress files out of the zip file so therefore I lost the folder structure and the installation wouldn’t work. I would suggest a warning about that.
Now I just have to figure out how to work with wordpress to compliment my current website blogs.
cheers
Richard
9:44 pm on July 3rd, 2009 182
fantastic, thank you so much, I was suffering with ten thousand tutorials and yours was the best and so straight forward. thanks!
8:25 pm on August 5th, 2009 183
Thanks much for the walkthrough – even using another hosting solution there was enough info here for me to get squared away.
Thanks again!
11:12 am on August 27th, 2009 184
this is what i used to set up my blog -
http://naukribuzz.com/
thanks a lot GAV !!
8:03 pm on August 28th, 2009 185
Thanks a lot for this help and i was looking around in web for a nice tutorial for my website to install wordpress. Thank you.
2:59 pm on September 1st, 2009 186
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6:26 am on September 9th, 2009 187
This tutorial is great, thanks very much, i like that.
blank
4:07 pm on September 17th, 2009 188
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1:20 pm on October 6th, 2009 189
Thank you very much for this helpfully guide. Bravo Wordpress.org.
10:17 am on October 13th, 2009 190
A great guide, made installation very easy! thanks
7:45 am on October 30th, 2009 191
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5:22 pm on November 7th, 2009 192
Hey thanks for this. But can i take you back to where i’ve created the database and i go back to my SQL databases. You say that i will see the address for the database server, but it ain’t on my screen. What can i do?
Thanks
5:28 pm on November 7th, 2009 193
Hi Ian,
It probably won’t be written with a http:// in front of it but it should definitely be somewhere on your databases pages so have a root around, it should be written somewhere there. If it isn’t, try and proceed with the Wordpress installation just putting in ‘localhost’ as the SQL server and see if it works.
7:41 am on November 18th, 2009 194
WOW! What a fantastic resource
I integrated wordpress blog as a subdirectory of my site, I downloaded wordpress from their site, extracted all files in a folder named “blog” and after that uploaded that folder on root of my site i.e at location “http://www.legitimatepaidsurveysonline.com/blog”. I just edited config.php file to fill up the SQL database details and my blog is working fine
2:53 pm on November 20th, 2009 195
My current host (for non WP sites) is very reliable but their one-click WP installer is for an old version – 2.3.1. I’ve set up multiple WP sites through control panel in the past. Will this tutorial be easy enough to walk me through a fresh install that I shouldn’t look for another host that has the current version of WP?
8:57 pm on November 26th, 2009 196
Excellent resource. Thank you so much for taking the time to put this up.
10:09 pm on December 11th, 2009 197
What is the easiest way to Uninstall a blog from Wordpress.
Thanks,
Dennis.
2:44 am on December 13th, 2009 198
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9:29 am on December 14th, 2009 199
But i am facing trouble after installing. when i enter to the address, then it shows index/
how can i solve it?
9:45 am on December 14th, 2009 200
Wow, 200 comments!
Dennis – Do you mean that you have a blog on your own self-hosted Wordpress domain that you wish to uninstall? Leave a return comment or send me an email – gav AT gavreilly DOT com – and let me know.
Hasmat – what do you mean? When you go to yourdomain.com it points you to /index/ ?
3:22 am on December 19th, 2009 201
Great article man thank you so much for this I was pulling my hair out on this site designed and needed to get something up fast this led me in the right direction. Now my site is up and I can get to the fun stuff being creative thanks again.
11:13 am on December 24th, 2009 202
Woow, thank you very much, this is GOLD information….
I now have my own blog on my own domain
http://www.walkingartwork.com/blog
That is amazing!
You are my hero
11:26 am on January 3rd, 2010 203
Justwanted to let you know how great your post is…
really wonderful
I now have live domain with wordpress installed
WOW WOW WOW……….
thanks
2:11 am on January 13th, 2010 204
I followed the above steps and when I get to the final installation in the browser I get this message. Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress. What do I do?????
9:27 am on January 26th, 2010 205
Wow, this was really helpful!
8:14 pm on February 5th, 2010 206
thank you very much this was easly the best walk and install i have ever done thank you again