installing wordpress

If you got your WordPress site up and running in the previous step, congratulations! You can skip this page.

If your web host doesn't provide an automatic installer, you can still install WordPress "the old way." In fact, even before the advent of installers, WordPress prided itself on its "Famous 5-minute installations." However, you might want to consider finding a more modern web host.

1. Download a copy of the WordPress .zip file from wordpress.org and expand it to a folder on your Desktop.
2. Log into your hosting control panel, find the Databases section, and create a new database. Take note of the database name, and the username and password needed to access it. These are not your WordPress username and password - they're database credentials. You'll need them during setup, then never again - make them strong!
3. In the WordPress folder you downloaded from wordpress.org, find the file called wp-config-sample.php. Make a copy of this file as wp-config.php, then open that copy in a text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit. Find the lines that reference the database credentials and edit them to match the credentials you set up at your host.
4. Using FTP, upload the entire folder to the right location on your web host. If you need help with FTP, see our FTP Tutorial. If you want the blog to be on your main domain, upload the contents of the WordPress folder into your public_html directory. If you want the blog to be in a subdirectory, such as example.com/blog, then upload the WordPress folder itself into public_html, then rename the wordpress folder to "blog".
5. Access the blog's URL (such as example.com/blog) in a web browser and WordPress will install the required tables into your blank database, then create a username and password for an administrative user. Copy this generated password to your clipboard, then click the "Log in" button.
6. Immediately after successfully logging in, click your name at the top right and change the password to something you can remember.

That's it! You're up and running.

Need more help? Detailed installation instructions are available here.