Setting up WordPress on your host

For those who haven’t heard, I’m a big fan of WordPress. It’s a great content management system! It’ll help you keep your site updated, and help you get blogging. If you’ve already got hosting, great! You can now setup WordPress on your own host. In fact, many of the sites I setup run on WordPress

If you do not have your own domain or hosting yet, I personally recommend getting hosting on:

Bluehost or

Dreamhost

Many hosts, like Bluehost, have Fantastico, which help you setup great utilities on your own host. If you have Fantastico on your host, check these great tutorials on setting up WordPress on your domain.

If you don’t have Bluehost or other similar domains, there is also service that will install your WordPress blog FOR FREE – no strings attached. This is great! You must have your own domain and host already in order to use this service.
http://install4free.wordpress.net/

For those do-it-yourselfers, follow these instructions on how to install a wordpress blog on your own domain:

First, check to see if your host has a 1-click install. Bluehost and Dreamhost both have one-click installs. Check here for a list of other hosts with 1-click installs.

Otherwise, follow the steps below…

1. Download the WordPress Package (http://www.worpdress.org/download).
Once the file has finished downloading, Unzip the file.

2. Connect to your domain via FTP. If you don’t have an FTP program, download Filezilla. If you have trouble connecting to your site, you can contact your host for help setting up your FTP environment.

3. Create a database for WordPress on your web server. You will need to login to your host in order to do this. Make sure you keep ALL your database information in a safe place. If you do not know how to setup a database, contact your host directly.

4. Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server. For example, if you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.

If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the folder you downloaded to “blog” and upload it to your web server.

If you have no idea what the above means, you have a few options:

1. contact your hosting company
2. hire someone
3. have someone do it for free : http://install4free.wordpress.net/

For a nice visual tutorial on setting up WordPress, go here : http://www.cre8d-design.com/wordpress.html

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[...] a WordPress Blog on your host (Read this post for help installing a wordpress blog on your [...]

Upcoming Workshop: Strategies for Internet Outreach | Arrow Root Media added these great thoughts on May 06 09 at 6:28 pm

Hi, great article, however the service at http://install4free.wordpress.net/ has been down for some time now, a similar service with additional free options is available at the following URL:
http://installwordpressfree.com/
Highly recommended for those that want “someone to do it for you”
Cheers

wombat added these pithy words on Jan 19 09 at 6:24 pm

Fantastico is a nice additional to cpanel for those not familiar with manually installing wordpress. There really isn't too much to a wordpress install, but if you are totally new to hosting Fantastico could come in handy.

Ray added these pithy words on Aug 14 09 at 5:57 pm

Hi,
Thanks for writing this post. Here's another option. I'm the founder of a website called Page.ly that automates wordpress setup. http://page.ly I'd love to have you check it out. Within two minutes a person can have hosting, a domain name, email, and a WordPress site. Also, it comes with popular plugins. It make the process even faster.

All the best,
Sally

BizGirl added these pithy words on Oct 12 09 at 7:35 pm

Hi,
Thanks for writing this post. Here's another option. I'm the founder of a website called Page.ly that automates wordpress setup. http://page.ly I'd love to have you check it out. Within two minutes a person can have hosting, a domain name, email, and a WordPress site. Also, it comes with popular plugins. It make the process even faster.

All the best,
Sally

BizGirl added these pithy words on Oct 13 09 at 2:35 am

This tutorial is clean and clear. But i have one question, how do i set up wp so that it is not the default index page? I want to create a link to my wp index page from the landing page of my website

adizo added these pithy words on Jan 30 10 at 4:58 pm

You can either setup an index.html page on your server, or create a home.php file. The hierarchy goes like this – your index.html file will be pulled up before any other file. Then if you have a home.php file setup, it will pull that up before your index.php file. Depending on your theme, you can just copy your theme’s index.php file or your theme’s page.php file and call home.php. Let me know if you have any other questions on this…