If you remember from my article on shared hosting, I spoke about WordPress Installation the three foundations that any website is built upon. They were:

1. The Domain
2. Web hosting
3. CMS

WordPress Installation

CMS, short for a Content Management System – or more specifically a Web Content Management System in our case – allows users to create, administer and manage a website effortlessly, without the need to have any code, programming, or website development knowledge.

For a more detailed insight into what a CMS can do – including its advantages and disadvantages, have a look at this Wikipedia article.

WordPress, as you may or may not know if universally accepted to be one of the best Content Management Systems (CMS) out there. Simply because of the reason that it allows website owners to get a website/blog up and running with close to zero effort.

For instance, WordPress is easy to install once you have your domain and web hosting in place and up and running. There are multiple ways to install WordPress (as we shall soon see). Once WordPress is installed on your website, you can manage all aspects of your website – including changing its appearance, managing pages, categories, and tags, optimizing for SEO, adding themes, addons, and plugins, and of course, it’s ease-of-use.

In addition, most web hosts (such as HostGator) allow for a one-click WordPress installation.

You can read a full list of WordPress features on their website.

According to Pingdom stats, WordPress powers almost half of some of the biggest blogs and websites in the world (aka Technorati’s Top-100 blogs):

WordPress usage stats

Most web hosts allow for easy ‘one-click’ WordPress installation right from the dashboard (through tools such as Fantastico or. However WordPress is free software, can be downloaded from the WordPress website and easily installed on your website using FTP.

If you wish to install WordPress on your website yourself, here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can easily do this:

Pre-installation checks:

Here’s a list of things that you need:

1. A web-browser.
2. Make sure you have access to your webserver/hosting account via FTP. All FTP-related details (username, password, host URL, and port number) are usually present in your web host’s dashboard. If you’re having trouble finding this information, it might be a good idea to speak with your web host’s support over the phone or chat in order to get this information.
3. An FTP client: Filezilla is the best in my opinion. Powerful yet easy-to-use and free. You can download now and install it on your computer or laptop.]
4. The updated version of WordPress from WordPress.org. Download it on your computer and unzip the ZIP file to a folder in some convenient place.

Step 1: Download WordPress and Unzip

Download the WordPress package, and unzip it to a convenient folder if you haven’t done so already. Direct link to the download page here.

Step 2: Create a Database

And you were things getting started tricky.

You need to create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.

There is a bunch of info on how to go about doing this for many different kinds of web hosts on the WordPress Codex website (direct link here, see step 2).

Step 3: Uploading Files

Upload your WordPress files to your server via FTP.

Open Filezilla and make sure you have your hostname, username, and password information handy. Enter this information, and after a few seconds, you will be able to see the contents of your web server (files and folders) in the first window. This is the ‘root’ (main) folder of your web server.

At this point, you need to decide where you want to install WordPress – or in other words, which part of your website would you want to power using WordPress: in the root (main) directory or a sub-directory.

1. then if are you think to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. to www.YourWebsiteName.com), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (excluding the WordPress directory itself) into the root directory of your web server. For this purpose, simply drag-and-drop the contents of the WordPress ZIP file that you extracted before to the root folder. The upload process will commence, and depending on your internet connection could take a while.
2. If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. www.YourWebsiteName.com/Blog) create a directory on your web server by the name of “blog’ and upload the contents of the unzipped WordPress package to the directory via FTP using the same process mentioned above – drag-and-drop the contents of the WordPress ZIP file that you extracted before to this particular folder. The upload process will commence, and depending on the speed of your internet connection could take a while.
   Bear in mind that calling your sub-directory ‘blog’ was just an example, you can call your sub-directory whatever you want. Just be sure to name it properly, in case you want to access your web-server in the future.

Step 4: WordPress Installation

Open your web-browser-of-choice (my recommendation is the free Google Chrome) ask your browser to initiate the installation script. Use either one of the following methods in order to accomplish this (depending on where you uploaded the WordPress files):

• If you placed the WordPress files in the root directory, you should visit: http://www.example.com/wp-admin/install.php
• If you want to put the WordPress files in a subdirectory called website, for example, you should visit:http://yourwebsitename.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

In the second instance, replace ‘blog’ with the name of the subdirectory you’re created earlier, whatever it might be.

At this point, WordPress will also set up the wp-config.php file – it will either tell you and offer to try to create and edit the file itself, or you can do this directly by putting wp-admin/setup-config.php in your web browser yourself.

WordPress will ask you for the database details and write them to a new wp-config.php file. Enter all the need details that it asks for here.

And then how to set up the wp-config.php file

This link allows you to see a list of common installation problems and how to troubleshoot each of them.

Step 5: Final Touches

Almost there! Just a few small steps left.

After the installation process completes, the first box asks you for a few details, including your site title, your desired user name, your choice of a password (twice), and your e-mail address. There’s also a check-box asking if you would like your blog to be indexed and appear in search engines like Google and Technorati. And you leave the box checked if you would like your website to be visible to everyone, including search engines, and you uncheck the box if you want to block search engines, but allow normal visitors.

Note all this information can be changed later in the Dashboard of your WordPress-powered website.

Once the process completes, simply enter your just-created username and password on the next page, and you’ll be taken to your WordPress Dashboard.

Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with your new environment. Or watch this space for a tutorial on using the WordPress dashboard, it’s many elements and functions.

Questions, comments, feedback is as always welcome.

How to make a free website: