I covered web hosting in some detail in the last post, but we’re going to go more in-depth as to what you’ll need [...]]]> OK, so now it’s time for part two of the “Create a Popular Blog with WordPress” series. I’ll assume you’ve already read through part one, and we’ll move on to the next steps.

I covered web hosting in some detail in the last post, but we’re going to go more in-depth as to what you’ll need out of your host and how to get WordPress up and running on it. WordPress has always been relatively easy to install and fairly bug free, but it’s improved over the years: The installation process is seamless once you’ve set everything up with your host. Let’s start from the beginning.

Knocking out requirements, and setting up the server environment

Disk Space

You’re going to need at least 8MB for WordPress alone, both on your computer and on the server. That’s just for the base system. Plugins can be several megabytes, and once you start adding content things get big. That covers disk space.

Server-Side Scripting

The server environment will need to support PHP, which is a  server side scripting language. In the old days, almost all sites were static HTML pages, and what little interactivity there was on the web was done through CGI which stands for Common Gateway Interface and is programmed in PERL. The PHP scripting language is similar to PERL in syntax, but it’s much more robust. In essence, WordPress is a program which is made up of these scripts, and if your server doesn’t know what they are then you can’t use WordPress! Luckily, PHP has become very popular over the past decade and whatever web host you pick most likely supports it, but make sure ahead of time. Hostmonster supports PHP, and everything else you’ll need for WordPress. In fact, Hostmonster actually has a wizard which will get you up and running without even having to follow this guide.

Database

Currently WordPress requires you to have a MySql 4.0 or later database installed. The word database can be confusing because sometimes it refers to a program like MySql, Microsoft SQL Server, or PostgreSQL. Other times the word is used to refer to a collection of data stored in the database program. In short, when you install a database program you create databases which are used by programs and scripts to store data in. On your host, you’ll have to create a database for WordPress, and remember the name for it. You’ll also create a user and a password (which you’ll also jot down) which WordPress will use to log into its database with.  Each database is made up of a collection of tables, and the tables are made up of rows and columns. Luckily, you don’t need to know much more than the very basics to get up and running with WordPress.

In order to do this on your host, you’ll probably have to run some kind of a wizard on the administration web page that you log into once you’re signed up. Hostmonster uses CPanel for it’s administration page, which is one of the most popular and easy to use. There is a MySql database wizard under the Databases section of CPanel which will allow you to create your WordPress database in just a few easy steps. All of the default settings will be already filled in, and you can just leave those alone. Just pick a name, a username, and a password for your WordPress database.

Configuring WordPress and installing it on the server

At this point you’ll want to download the latest version of WordPress at http://wordpress.org/download/. Save the file to your desktop. You should be able to open the compressed zip file without any extra programs, but if you can’t, WinRar is a great shareware tool for Windows users. You can download it at http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm. The installation is fairly simple, and it’s free for use on a trial basis.

Extract the WordPress folder out of the zip file (you can probably just drag it on to your desktop). Once it’s done copying, you can close the zip file, and open up the new “wordpress” folder on your desktop. We don’t need to do anything with these files just yet, but you can see all the PHP files that WordPress will be using once we upload it to your server. Before we upload it though, we need to edit a file, so open up wordpad (or whatever text editing program you like best). Go to the file menu, select open, and navigate over to your wordpress folder. On the drop-down menu labeled “files of type” select “All Documents (*.*)” and locate the file wp-config-sample.php and open it.

Configuring the WordPress wp-config.php file

The syntax of the file may be confusing at first, but we only need to make a few simple changes, so get out that peice of paper you wrote your database info on and build up some courage. At the top of the document you’ll see several lines like “define(’DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere’);.” These are the one’s we’ll be editing. In between the single quotes, put the name of the database you made for WordPress. NOTE: Some web hosts automatically assign a prefix to your database names like “ACCOUNTNAME_MyWordPressDatabase.” You’ll need to include this in your database name.

Enter in your the user name and password you picked in the same fashion (between the single quotes). You should be able to leave the other options alone, unless of course you changed those settings on your host. Go back to the file menu and click “save as.” Save the file as wp-config.php and close out of wordpad. Now the hard part is over.

Uploading the installation to the server

At this point, you’ll need to locate the FTP login information that your web host provided you. If you cannot find it, contact them and get it. They should have provided you with a hostname, username, and password. On Hostmonster it’s just yourdomain.com and the same username and password you use to log into your control panel.

You’ll also need an FTP client which is a program that allows you to connect to and upload/manage files on the server. I highly recommend FileZilla because it’s free, easy to use and full of great features. You can download it at  http://filezilla-project.org/download.php. Once again, the installation is quite simple. Just run the program after it’s done downloading and keep clicking next.

Once you’ve installed your client and connected to your host, you’ll need to find the folder where your public web pages go. It will usually be called public_html or wwwroot or something to that effect. As long as you haven’t been using the host for other pages you can safely delete everything in your public html ‘root’ folder, though you may wish to download the files to a folder on your PC first, just in case.

Will WordPress be your entire site, or just part of it?

At this point you need to decide if you want your blog to be accessed by a regular URL like www.myblog.com, or if you’d rather make a subdirectory for it like www.myblog.com/blog. For SEO (search engine optimization) purposes, not using a subdirectory for the blog is best, but it really depends on what else you plan on doing with your site. If you choose a subdirectory, choose the name of it, and create a folder with that name. If not, upload all of the files inside the wordpress folder on your computer to the public_html (or html root) directory on your server. This will take a few minutes to complete.

Completing the setup

Now that you’ve configured WordPress and uploaded it, open up a web browser and navigate to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php (replace yourdomain.com with your domain!). If all is well and set up properly, you should see a setup page in your browser. Run through the simple setup procedure, taking note of the automatically generated password, and you’re all set up! You’ll want to then go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin (or yourdomain.com/yourblogfolder/wp-admin) and log in and change that password to something you can remember.

That’s all there is to it!

Next time we’ll cover some necessary plugins and other configurable options as well as themes and rudimentary SEO settings. Leave a comment if you have any issues installing, or just to say hi! I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I can.