How to Install WordPress

Getting your website to be WordPress powered takes just a few steps:

1. Find a Domain & a Web Host
2. Install WordPress
3. Add Content and Modify website
4. Launch Website Live and let www enjoy!

So let’s guide you through these steps to get wordpress rockin’ for your own site.

1) Find a Domain and a Web Host

Get a Domain Name

So the first thing you want to do is to get a domain name. A domain is a URL or web address that will point users to your web host server. If you’re creating a website for your business of course it would be a great idea to find your business name for your domain.  For example if your company name is “Company Inc.” you might try to find the domain name company.com or companyinc.com, etc. In picking a domain name it’s good to try to make it as easy to remember and to type for users as possible. Sometimes you have to get creative if all the names are taken such as CompanyIncOnline.com or Company-Inc.com, etc. So the question then comes to where do I get a domain name. Well my favorite place to get domain names is actually GoDaddy.  It’s easy to manage domain names there, they are inexpensive, and you get all the features you’d expect to have with your domain purchase without any fee’s and such.  Other domain providers such as NetworkSolutions.com or Hover.com are pretty good, but much more expensive. So I’d recommend just going to GoDaddy.com and simply type in the box what domain name you’d like to have and search until you find one that is available and purchase it.  They are usually around $11.00 p/domain name, but if you want to save a few bucks head on over to RetailMeNot.com and you can usually find a coupon code to save some money at GoDaddy. (Your Welcome)

Get your web hosting

After you have a domain name it’s time to get your web hosting.  This is where your actual wordpress website is going to live and the domain name just points here for web browsers to see.  The first thing is to decide who you want to host with.  There are a number of great web hosts out there for WordPress, some deciding factors are things like how much you want to spend (budget), how much space you’ll need, how much bandwidth you’ll need, security, etc.  So I’d definitely do some homework before you decide, but for most everybody a simple hosting package will do the trick.  Some web host companies we recommend are:

• GetFlyWheel.com (WordPress Hosting Starting at $15 p/month)
• StormOnDemand (Starting at $55 p/month)
• GoDaddy.com (Starting at $4.49 p/month)
• Page.ly (Starting at $19.95 p/month)
• WPWebHost.com (Starting at $7.95 p/month)
• iPower.com (Starting at $4.95 p/month)
• BlueHost.com (Starting at $5.95 p/month)
• iPage.com (Starting at $6.95 p/month)
• WPEngine.com (Starting at $49 p/month) (10% OFF)
• Wurv.com (Starting at $7 p/month)

Every one of the above hosting providers will in fact install WordPress on there servers for you or at least give you simple tools to install it yourself.  You go about purchasing the hosting the same way you purchased the domain name.  Each one is slightly different, so take a look at each one and decide which one suites your site best.

2) Install WordPress

Automatic Install

As we mentioned in the web hosting section that many web hosts have the ability to install wordpress for you making it even easier to install.  Many of them put it on there right away right as you purchase their hosting and others such as GoDaddy, iPower, Bluehost you need to simply go into their control panel and click some buttons to install WordPress. For example if you are hosting with GoDaddy you simply launch the Hosting Manager and you’ll see a section on the right that says “Applications Install and Manage” and you can very easily install WordPress right from there.   GoDaddy even has the option to do specific WordPress hosting where they’ll install it for you.  The same goes with other hosting providers listed above.  So before reading below on how to install it manually be sure to check with your web host to see if they have an automated way of installing it for you.

Here are some videos on how to install WordPress automatically with 3 different web hosts (GoDaddy, BlueHost, and iPower):

Automatic Install w/GoDaddy

Automatic Install w/iPower

Automatic Install w/BlueHost

Manual Install

If your web host doesn’t provide automatic install or you simply just want to install it manually here are the steps to do so.

First off there are a few things that you’ll need to be able to install WordPress.  Of which are:

1. FTP Access to your web server (usually consists of a hostname (url or IP), username, and password)
2. An FTP Client (such as Transmit)
3. An HTML Editor (Such as Text Edit, Coda, Espresso, etc)
4. A Web Browser of your choice (Such as Safari, Chrome, Firefox, or …[gulp] Internet Explorer.

The next steps are to make sure that your host has the minimum requirements to support WordPress.  There are only really two main requirements to install wordpress your web host needs to support PHP version 5.2.4 or greater and MySQL version 5.0 or greater.  Most all modern web host support these by default, so you usually don’t have to worry, but just to be safe you might want to contact your web host and check just to be sure.

Famous 5-Minute Install:

Here’s the quick version of the instructions, for those that are already comfortable with performing such installations. More detailed instructions follow.

1. Download and unzip the WordPress package from WordPress.org.
2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
3. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.
4. Open wp-config.php in an HTML editor and fill in your database details as explained in Editing wp-config.php to generate and use your secret key password.
5. Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server:
   • If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.
   • If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the directory wordpress to the name you’d like the subdirectory to have and move or upload it to your web server. For example if you want the WordPress installation in a subdirectory called “blog”, you should rename the directory called “wordpress” to “blog” and upload it to the root directory of your web server.
6. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in a web browser.
   • If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php
   • If you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit:http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

That’s it! WordPress should now be installed.

If you are brand new to WordPress and databases, then you might be scratching your head at this point.  For those people I’ve created a video to show you how to install wordpress manually.  Watch the video below:

Conclusion

That should get you all set to be able to get WordPress installed on your server.  So a big congratulations for installing the best tool for creating full-sized, social media-rich websites.  Read some of the next posts that will then discuss what the next steps are to get your website now molded to your liking.  Some of those steps now include:

• Choosing a WordPress Theme that fits your site.
• Using Plugins to expand your site to do what you need it to do.
• Tweak and modify settings to get it just how you like it.
• Add content and manage website to your liking.

Thanks for visiting Learn2Wordpress.com and good luck with getting your WordPress site started.
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