Lesson 7 – How to install WordPress

WordPress

Create a user and a database for WordPress.

1. Browse to your new website (See Lesson 6 – Hosts and htdocs) and follow it with phpmyadmin ie:

http://diyws.ath.cx/phpmyadmin

2. Enter the username and password you created when you secured your XAMPP installation (See Lesson 4)
3. Click the Privileges link
4. Click the Add a new User link
5. In the “Login Information area“, in the User name: field, retain the Use text field: option from the dropdown list, and enter your desired username who will own this database on mySQL. To make it easy, just use wordpress.
6. In the Host field, select Local from the dropdown list, and phpmyadmin will fill out the field for you with the name localhost.
7. In the Password text field, retain the Use text field: option from the dropdown list, and enter your desired password.
8. Type the same password in the Retype: text field.
9. In the “Database for user area“, select the radio button that says: “Create database with same name and grant all privileges”
10. In the “Global privileges area“, click the Check all link .
11. Click the Go button.

You now have a new user and a database called wordpress.

Download and install WordPress

1. Download WordPress from http://WordPress.org/latest.zip

Do you want to:
2a. Use WordPress as the main content on your website?  ie: http://yourhost.yourdomain.xyz
If so, unzip the WordPress files into a temporary folder, then copy the content of the wordpress folder (ie: if you unzipped to c:temp, you’ll now have a folder called c:tempwordpress) to the DocumentRoot of your domain (See Lesson 6 – Hosts and htdocs)
2b. Use WordPress in a folder of your website?  ie: http://yourhost.yourdomain.xyz/blog
Simply unzip the WordPress files into your DocumentRoot (See Lesson 6 – Hosts and htdocs) and then rename the wordpress folder to, say, blog like I’ve done over at the Do-It-Yourself WebServer Blog

3. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.

4. Double click the wp-config.php file – select Notepad as the program to open it with, but uncheck (or ensure the checkbox is unchecked) the option that says “Always use this program to open files of this type” (or whatever it says!) because you’ll be wanting to get a PHP IDE (integrated development environment) so you can edit your PHP files later. Yes, you might even want to tweak a few things, and to do that, you’ll need to edit your PHP files. Don’t worry about that for the moment. (Update June 2010! Go and get SeaMonkey from http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ and download for your platform. It contains a web browser like Firefox, but also includes an HTML editor with FTP publishing capabilities – you’ll really want that!)
5. Edit the following things, as shown below:

// ** MySQL settings ** //
define('DB_NAME', 'WordPress');    // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'WordPress');     // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', '***the_password_you_chose***'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');    // 99% chance you won't need to change this value
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

6. Also set the AUTH_KEY, SECURE_AUTH_KEY, and LOGGED_IN_KEY lines with appropriate values. See below:

// Change each KEY to a different unique phrase.  You won't have to remember the phrases later,
// so make them long and complicated.  You can visit http://api.WordPress.org/secret-key/1.1/
// to get keys generated for you, or just make something up.  Each key should have a different phrase.
define('AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here'); // Change this to a unique phrase.
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here'); // Change this to a unique phrase.
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here'); // Change this to a unique phrase.

Strong Hint: Do go to http://api.WordPress.org/secret-key/1.1/ as suggested above, and some uniquely generated keys will appear – copy and paste these over the top of the same lines in the file.

7. Save the file.

8. Open a browser tab, and go to http://yoursite.yourdomain.xyz/wp-admin/install.php (if you want WordPress to be the main content of your site – see 2a above) or http://yoursite.yourdomain.xyz/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php (if you installed WordPress in a folder of your website – see 2b above)

9. If there were no errors, WordPress will now prompt you to enter a title for your blog. Also enter your email address. Ensure the checkbox “Allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati.” is ticked – you definitely want that!

10. Click the Install WordPress button!

11. Assuming everything went ok, you will now see a page giving you the login details of your new WordPress installation. The username of admin, and a randomly generated password. Copy this password now, and click the Log In button.

Since the randomly generated admin password is difficult to remember, you may want to change it. Login to WordPress with the details presented to you in step 11 but, if you want to change the password, ensure the Remember me checkbox is unchecked, and then say no to whatever prompt you get from your browser asking you to remember the password.

12. Change the admin password (optional step) by clicking the Users link in the top right hand corner.

13. Click the admin user from the list.

14. Scroll to the bottom of the page and enter the new password into the text fields.

15. Click the Update Profile button.

All done!

You’ve now installed WordPress. Give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done.

All you need to know about WordPress

There are lots of places on the ‘net to find WordPress documentation, themes and plug-ins. Have fun searching!

Just Watch, Copy and Profit – from the WordPress Junkie!

If you’re all happy and content, continue onto Lesson 8, where we set up an auto-responder!