How to Install WordPress

There are two ways to install WordPress on your domain name.

The first is to login to your web hosting control panel and install WordPress using an installation script. This is a simple-click-through process.

The other way is slightly more elaborate. It requires manually downloading WordPress from www.wordpress.org, uploading it to your web hosting account space using a file transfer utility and then installing it. You might also have to deal with a few technical things like executing programming commands and the like.

While the second (manual) method allows you to customize a few settings before you do the installation, you run the risk of getting it wrong if you make even a small mistake (like missing a single letter in a command).

Since this tutorial is for beginners, I will show you the easier way of doing it through your web hosting control panel that is less prone to beginners’ mistakes. Some installation scripts don’t allow you to tweak some of the complex settings before or during the installation, but that’s ok – you should be able to do them once the installation is over and I’ll cover those in a later lesson.

What are Installation Scripts?

Installation scripts are “software” that help you install other software like blogging or forum frameworks on your domain name. They allow you specify the required settings and then take it from there and install the software for you. All the difficult tasks like creating databases or executing commands is automatically handled by them and you are finally provided with a freshly installed software.

The most popular installation scripts are Softaculous, Fantastico, Quick Install and Simple Scripts. Some hosts provide just one of these scripts, while others provide more than one (and then there is the occasional host who doesn’t provide any).

Personally, I think Softaculous is the best one among the various scripts. However, not all web hosts provide this. Hostgator, for example, is the host I usually recommend around this site but they too don’t support Softaculous (and this is one of the minor gripes I have against them). They provide Fantastico and Quick Install in their control panels.

These other scripts, while they don’t match Softaculous in their thoughtfulness, are still not bad and do achieve the end goal. In this lesson, I’ll illustrate the installation process using both Softaculous and Fantastico (90% of the hosts would support either of these). You’d be able to use just about any other script offered by your host once you understand the settings that I explain below.

Finding the Installation Script

That, you can find in the web hosting control panel – the central place from where you can manage everything related to your hosting space and keep an eye on important parameters like your space and bandwidth usage. If you haven’t logged into your control panel ever, this is how to find your details: when you signed up for web hosting you would have received an email with your hosting account details, similar to the one below.

Click on your control panel link (marked ‘Your Control Panel’ in the example above) and login with your username and password. Hostgator’s cPanel looks like the following:

Finding so many things inside your control panel can be a bit scary for a beginner. But worry not, there are a very few things you’ll need from the control panel and at the moment the only thing you need is the installation script. They should be there inside the Software/Services section.

Like I said before, your host might support one or more of these scripts. My order of preference is Softaculous, Fantastico, Quick Install and Simple Scripts. Decide on the one you plan to use and click on it.

I show you how to do it using Softaculous first. If you want to use Fantastico, skip this section and scroll down.

WordPress Install using Softaculous

Clicking on Softaculous will get you to a page where you’d be able to see a whole lot of categories on the left hand side and the “top scripts” in the center/right of the screen. WordPress appears first in the list of Top Scripts for me and I assume it should for you too. Hover your mouse on it and click on Install.

You should now see the following page.

These are the details/settings that you need to give Softaculous for it to be able to install WordPress for you. Let’s look at each of these details.

Choose Protocol: There are two things at play here.

The first one: Are you planning to create an online store or collect credit card or other sensitive information from your visitors on your WordPress site? If yes, then you would want to make sure that all the information from your visitors is handled securely by your website. This would require you to buy and install what is called an SSL certificate for your site. Consequently, your site (or some of its pages which handle the sensitive information) would have to be placed under “https”. On the other hand, if yours is a site where no such information is gotten from your visitors, you’d go the usual route – that is “http”.

The next thing is this: Do you want “www” in front of your site’s web address – like “www.yourdomain.com”? Or would you just have it as “yourdomain.com”? This is totally a matter of taste, so feel free to make it either way. This site, for example, doesn’t have the “www” preceding “makeawebsite.tv” in its web address. It makes the address a wee bit shorter too.

Based on these two things, you’d want to choose the appropriate option from the drop-down list. For example, if you don’t take any sensitive information from your visitors and you do want the “www” in front of your domain name, choose “http://www” from the drop down.

Choose Domain: If your web hosting account allows you to host websites for multiple domain names, all of them will show up in this list. If it allows just one, then that one domain will be listed here. Choose the domain on which you intend to create a WordPress website now.

In Directory: Do you want your WordPress website’s main page (home page) to be visible on yourdomain.com? If yes, then leave this box empty (if there is something already in this field, remove it) Or do you want it at a different web address – like “yourdomain.com/blog” ? If that is the case, then enter “blog” (or whatever else you want) in this text box.

In the notes beside the setting, it says that the directory “should not exist”. All this means is that you should not already have a directory called “blog” (for the above example) in your domain name’s main directory (inside your hosting account). Unless you manually created such a directory before now or are trying to re-install WordPress on your domain name, no such directory would exist.

Database Name: WordPress internally stores your site’s content in what is known as a database. Softaculous automatically comes up with a nice name that is a combination of letters and numbers like “wp513” (good for security purposes), so you may leave this field as it is or change the number at the end to something you like.

Table Prefix: This is again a database related setting. By default, Softaculous sets this as “wp_”. I usually like to change this to something more secure like “wp_” followed by initials of the sitename or a number and then an underscore – like “wp_yd_” or “wp_43_”. I recommend you to do the same.

Site Name: What is your site going to be called? “HillCreek Online”? “Creative Cues”? Specify it here. You can change this after the installation too, from within your WordPress admin area, so you can postpone the naming process if you want to.

Site Description: Tagline that appears next to your site name. Can be changed later.

Enable Multisite (WPMU): Are you planning to create a number of WordPress blogs or websites on your domain name – like blog1.yourdomain.com, blog2.yourdomain.com (or even yourdomain.com/blog1 and yourdomain.com/blog2)? Do you want to offer blogs to some of your visitors that they can update themselves? If this is the case, then enabling this option will allow you to handle all these sub-blogs from a central place instead of creating a separate WordPress blog each time you need one.

However, if this doesn’t sound like what you really had in mind and are just suddenly considering the possibility, then don’t enable this option. Unless you have created WordPress websites before (and since you are reading this tutorial, I assume that is not the case), this can quickly make things confusing for you down the road.

It can lead to technical problems, make your site slow, break some of your plugins and so on. I’d say that you’d need to be a little more than an absolute beginner to handle WPMU properly. The rest of the lessons in this series deal with the standalone version of WordPress, not the Multisite version.

Admin Username: Your website should have an administrator account. Choose a username that is something other than ‘admin’. Change it to something that is longer and difficult to guess for a stranger. You will be using this username and the password to login to your WordPress admin area in the next lesson.

Admin Password: Choose something that is a combination of letters, numbers and symbols. And definitely not your cat’s name, please. You don’t want to lose your WordPress website’s control to some random hacker.

Admin Email: Provide an email id that you use. Important updates regarding your site will be sent to this email id automatically by your site.

Select Language: WordPress is available in multiple languages. Choose yours.

Under the Advanced Options, you’ll find two more settings:

Disable Update Notifications: If you don’t want your WP site to send you any notifications, check this option.

Auto Upgrade: WordPress keeps coming up with improvements and newer features that are released as part of new versions. If you check this option, Softaculous will automatically upgrade your installation to the latest version. It is recommended that you DON’T check this option. Upgrades are better done manually whenever they are necessary.

If you’d want the installation details (including the username and password) to be sent to an email id, enter it below the install button.

Recheck all the details once more and click on Install.

WordPress Install using Fantastico

Clicking on Fantastico in your web hosting control panel will take you to a new page with a list of items on the left side under the navigation menu.

WordPress originally started out as a blogging software (that’s why it’s listed under Blogs) but progressively came out with more and more features every release and now you can create not just blogs but a full-blown website with lots of features.

Clicking on WordPress would bring related options on the right hand side.

Clicking on new installation will lead to a new screen where you have to provide details regarding the installation.

An explanation of each of the fields:

Install on domain: If you got your hosting account by specifying the domain name on which you are currently installing WordPress, then it would be already chosen for you in this drop-down. If your hosting account allows it, then you can create more than one website on the same account. In that case you would be able to ‘add more domain names‘ to your hosting account and when you do so, you will also have the option of installing WordPress on more or all of your domain names (separately of course) by choosing one domain name in this box at a time. I am using “yourdomain.com” as an example for this illustration.

Install in directory: If you leave this box blank, then your WordPress powered website/blog would be available to your visitors at yourdomain.com. If you choose ‘somename’ in this field, then it would be available to your visitors at yourdomain.com/somename. You’d do the latter only if you plan to install something else in your main folder (like a forum) or want to have a custom programmed web page as your main page. If you want your blog/website directly available on yourdomain.com, you would want to leave this blank.

Administrator username: Once you are done installing WordPress for the domain name yourdomain.com, thenceforth in order to add content to your website, you will have to login to the WordPress admin area (generally referred to as “wpadmin”) which you will be able to access at yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/. Remember, this is different from your hosting account’s control panel from which you are currently installing WordPress. You will have to create a username and password which you will use to access wpadmin. Choose a good username.

Password: This will be your wpadmin password. It is best if no one can guess this password with ease. Make it a combination of letters and numbers. And symbols.

Admin nickname: Choose a nickname. This is usually published under your blog post titles (e.g. “Posted by Bill”). Even if you don’t want your nickname to be visible on your site, choose a proper name here. You can change this later by logging in to your wpadmin.

Admin e-mail: This is the email id where information regarding your website is sent. Needless to say, enter a valid e-mail here.

Site name: Fill in with the name of your site. For example: “Hillside Creek Online”. You can change this later from wpadmin.

Description: This will be the tag line that will show below/next to your website’s name. Can be changed later.

Once all of the details are entered, double-check them (and note down the password so you don’t forget it), and click on “Install WordPress”.

Review your Installation Details

You will be shown a few of the details for your review. Once you have checked the details, click on ‘Finish Installation‘

WordPress will be installed and you will be shown your username and password to help you out, in case you forgot to note it down earlier. Fill in your email address and the details of your installation will be sent over to your email address.

That’s pretty much it! You’ve installed WordPress!

One Final Step

Before we call it done, you do want to make sure that WordPress was properly installed on your domain name. Navigate to your domain name (yourdomain.com in the above example) to see if you can see the following:

Once you’ve confirmed you can see something like the above, you can be sure you’ve got it all right. If you can’t see it, try refreshing your browser (‘F5’ in most browsers) or doing a forced-reload of the webpage (Ctrl + R in Firefox). This makes sure you aren’t seeing anything from your browser’s cache but what is actually being served by your web host.

In the next few lessons, you’ll learn the ropes of using WordPress to build your website from the scratch. The immediate thing to do, however, would be to login to your newly installed WordPress site.