WordPress is famous for its 5-minute installation. Installing a WordPress blog takes less than 5 minutes and is very simple. Before you install a WordPress blog you need a hosting server and a domain. A domain is your website address and a hosting server is a space where you install your WordPress blog. You can buy your preferred domain from GoDaddy — they are a big player for domain hosting and have been in this business a long time.
Now you have to buy a hosting server account. You need to pay close attention when choosing a hosting company. Read my previous article tips to choose the web hosting. I recommend HawkHost, as I’m using their service for this blog. Their support is good.
After you have your own domain and hosting account, we can continue to install your WordPress blog. Before you begin, please think about what your blog will be about. Internet marketers call it a niche. My suggestion is to find the niche you like the most. That way you’ll write content with passion and update it every day.
Installing a WordPress blog is really easy. If your hosting has Fantastico then it would be even easier. But I’d like to do a manual installation, and I’ll show you how.
Download WordPress
Click here to download WordPress from their site.
Upload it to your hosting server
There are many ways to upload the WordPress files. I suggest you upload using FTP with an FTP client such as FileZilla. I am assuming that your hosting has cPanel, so you can upload the zip file and later extract it through cPanel.
Extract the uploaded zip file
Now open your cPanel account and choose File Manager. You will find the zip file there. Extract it to the public_html folder or to any subfolder if you want to install it in a subdirectory.
Create database
Still in cPanel, choose MySQL Databases. Create a database and database user. Then give the database user privileges for the new database.
Install WordPress
Now type your domain URL in your address bar where you want to install your WordPress blog. You will see the WordPress installation wizard page. It will ask for your database user and password. Give the database name, database host (usually localhost), database username, and password. Then click next.
Now you need to fill in your site title, email, username, and password, and uncheck “Allow my site to appear in search engines…”. Because your WordPress blog is still new, Google will consider it a low-quality website. We’ll fix this later.
Then press “Install WordPress”.
Voila! Now you have a WordPress blog.
Your WordPress blog is now installed. The next step is configuration. I’ll write about that in the next article.