WordPress 2.1 Part 1 of 3 | Installing from scratch
Tim February 21st, 2007
This post is part of a series:
Wordpress 2.1 Part 1 of 3 | Installing from scratch
WordPress 2.1 Part 2 of 3 | Digging into the Administration Panel
WordPress 2.1 Part 3 of 3 | Customizing and Extending WordPress
To kick off our reviews here at DemoMarks I’ve decided to take WordPress 2.1 for a test drive. WordPress is a blogging platform developed by Matt Mullenweg that has continually gained in popularity for the wide array of plugins and themes, large community base, and ability to customize every aspect. Many web developers are choosing WordPress as a content management system for client websites and, as you may have already noticed, DemoMarks is built on WordPress.
While installation is far from difficult, users who have no web hosting have the option of using WordPress.com’s integrated blogging platform that cuts out the middleman and allows anyone to sign up for a blog with hosting provided by WordPress. However, this demo will cover the installation of WordPress on your own hosting service. Part 2 will cover navigation of the administration panel and Part 3 with explore the customization options available to you using WordPress to make your blog unique.
Requirements for this demo:
1. Ok, let’s get started. Our first step is going to be to navigate to http://www.wordpress.org to download the necessary files.
2. From the main navigation menu we choose the “Download” button to get the latest version of WordPress. From there we will choose the appropriate file. I’m going to download the .zip file since I have unzipping software installed on my computer.
3. After downloading the file to the appropriate folder (or desktop if you wish) open it with your favorite software and unzip it somewhere on the computer.
4. You should now have a folder called “wordpress” somewhere on your computer with this set of files stored inside.
5. Open up your ftp program of choice (I’m a fan of Filezilla). Connect to your host through FTP and upload the entire contents of the “wordpress” folder to your website. You have the choice of putting the wordpress files in a subfolder (http://www.yourdomain.com/blog) or directly into the root folder.
6. After you’ve completed the upload you can open up your web browser. At this point if you clicked on Internet Explorer please close it and get Firefox. You’ll thank me later. Once you’ve navigated to either your homepage or the subdirectory depending on what you chose when FTPing the files, you should see a screen like this;
If you are running into problems, verify with your hosting service that PHP and MySQL are supported (We recommend Dreamhost). Also make sure the directory you uploaded the files to was empty.
7. It’s time to configure your WordPress installation. For all intents and purposes the web-based configuration manager should suit your needs so go ahead and click “create a wp-config file through a web interface.”
You’ll see some basic information on what you need to continue. At this point if you haven’t already, create a MySQL database and consult your hosting company for help. If you’re already set up and ready to go click “let’s go!”
8. Input all the necessary information into this next page. Beware Dreamhost users, you will need to change “Localhost” to reflect the actual hostname of the database. Again you should be able to get all this information from your hosting company or alternatively if you’ve set up web hosting on your own you’re probably hoping I’ll stop talking and move right along.
9. Assuming you got the database connected properly you should be greeted with this message:
Go ahead and click “run the install.”
10. Are you sick of hitting the next button yet? Quit whining and click “First Step.”
11. You get the chance to give your blog a name and tie it to an email address for communication. Fill those fields out and click “Second Step.”
12. Surprise! You’re done. The installation actually doesn’t take very long at all. We now get an admin username as well as a default password. This password will be sent to you by email but write it down just in case. You will want to change this through the administration panel later.
13. To make sure everything worked, go ahead and navigate to your main webpage where you installed WordPress. You should see the default installation which will look a lot like this:
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