This part of our course on WordPress is kind of the basic of all website creation nowadays. What i’ll learn here can be apply to install others website or application on a host.
Find a host
A website is code host on a server, and server area is own by an host company that lend you server space for a monthly or yearly fee, this fee can by really cheap depending on your needs.
To find a host company, just type and search, host for my website and google will help you with that.
Now after you have visited some host websites and choose from them, you can create an account and subscribe to a host service. This part of course vary upon your choice.
Register a domain name
Here come the second important part of the process, register a domain name, this mean register the name of your future website, like foo.com, pizzasnack.us. Your host, again, offer that service and allow you if you look about it in their menu, to buy your domain name, choose a name, an extension like “.com”, “.us” pay the fee and your all set, for the first part.
Now you possess all the tools for creating your wordpress website.
Install wordpress on your server
Last part is to create your website or better said install a wordpress version on your server, here you can choose two options.
The host one click solution
Your host offer to create a wordpress website with one click install process ( this is the easier way to go) you just need to follow your host instructions on how to set up a wordpress website, today almost all host offer that kind of solution, so you can install wordpress and link it to you domain name
Get wordpress and upload it on your server ( manual option )
Go on wordpress.org and find the last version of wordpress ( in a zip or tar packaging ), download and unzzip the package.
When unzzip you get all the wordpress directories and files. This part need a bit more work, but you actually control every step of the installation on your server. To upload on your server the file you need a server manager like Filezilla, or Cyberduck, thoses tools are free. You can download them on their respective website.
You can also upload you files using a server manager, call also FTP tools using the one integrate to you host account. This option ca be easy or hard depending on what you host allows.
Personnally i thing is better to use un FTP tool, cause you start to understand how you website works. To use this you will you server credentials though, server name, password, port.
Done ! your ready to use wordpress.
Again install per you host is easier, so you go on your domain name, mywebsite.com you will see that screen below with the name of your website.
if you’re installing your website using a manual method with FTP tools, server credentials and domain name already link to the server you will that screen below
This is actually a good news.
It’s means that your domain name is pointed to your server and that wordpress is on the first stage for installation.
So choose your language, and after that you’ll a second screen.
This page is important cause here you’ll tell wordpress which database to use. With a server a database is another tool use by all website, is allows simply to keep your datas and to interact with it.
IMPORTANT: this screen display dummy infos don’t use those.
All the infos ask here are all available in you host account.
- database name
- identifier use to connect to your database
- password of the database
- the database address
- a prefix table for the wordpress table use some characters 3 or 4 and put a underscore after, for security reason don’t use the default ‘wp_’ prefix.
Once all that completed you’ll will see a success and a link to your home page.