Installing Wordpress, Starting Your Own Website (part 4)

Okay so you are almost ready to start posting and setting up your website how you want it. There is only one step left for you to do, and that's getting publishing software. The easiest thing to do is go to Wordpress.org and download the latest version of Wordpress. This is free software so no worries about spending unnecessary money here.

Wordpress will be downloaded in .zip format so you will need a program to extract it, I use WinRAR. Now you will need to extract the file to a folder on your hardrive. My suggestion is that you put it somewhere that is easy to remember and is easily accessible for you.

Okay, next you are going to create a database for Wordpress. Go to your web hosting server, or C-panel. Now scroll down to databases and click on MySQL Databases. Now just create a new user, then create a new database. If this website is for your personal use just check all of the boxes under the priveleges options. Make sure you add a user to the database. Now just leave this window open so you can refer back to it in a minute.

Now go to the location of your wordpress. Open the folder and scroll down until you see a file called wp-config-sample, then open it in wordpad or notepad. Scroll down until you see // ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** // Under this line you will have to fill in a few values so wordpress can connect to your SQL Database. Refer back to the MySQL Databases on your C-panel. This is pretty self explanatory, just fill in the values from the SQL Database you just set up, the database name, your database user name, and your database password. Your hostname can be found by asking your web host but I think it's usually localhost. You should be able to leave everything else default. When you are finished editing go to "save as" and save this file as wp-config.

The next step is to open your FTP program, that is Filezilla for example. Log in to your website on Filezilla then go to the public html folder on the right side. This is the location where you are going to install Wordpress. The public html folder is where you will store anything on your website that you want other people to be able to see. Everything on the left side of Filezilla is the files on your computer. Go to the location of the Wordpress file you just downloaded. Highlight everything in the file and drag it to the public html folder. After all of the files are finished transferring go to your website. When you type in your domain name you should go to a Worpress themed page asking you for a blog name. If this is what you see then you have successfully installed wordpress. If not then you should go back into your wp-config file and make sure all of your database information is correct.