WordPress Blogging software is one of the best and one of the easiest to Install and Setup. This is a basic How to Install WordPress guide ideal if you are installing WordPress for the first time. This is a very quick guide to installing WordPress is aimed at those who already have a working knowledge of concepts such as FTP, Config Files, MySQL Databases and have access to their own web server. This WordPress Install Guide is guided towards Apache servers running on Linux with PHP installed and a MySQL Database available.  For version 2.9.2 (version available at time of writing this install guide) the minimum requirements for installation are PHP version 4.3 or greater and a  MySQL database version 4.1.2 or greater. If you are unsure contact your website hosting company or check your control panel (e.g. cPanel). You will also need FTP Access to your web server and FTP Software – I recommend FireFTP which is a FireFox Plugin and is quite a good FTP Client.

Step 1 : Download WordPress & Extract WordPress on your PC

WordPress is Free and you can download it at http://wordpress.org/download/ The software downloads as a compressed ZIP file and is about 2.2Mb which would take under a minute on decent broadband. Once Downloaded, you can extract this on your PC. Depending on your PCs setup you can usually right click on the zip file and select “Extract Here…” – a folder should then appear with all the source code in the root directory and 3 subfolders.

Step 2 : Upload your WordPress code to your webserver

Next you need to connect to your web server by FTP. Usually you will be brought into / or if you are lucky /public_html/ The /public_html/ directory is where your homepage’s files are located – if you want your blog to be your homepage you can install the software here – Be warned if you already have content in this directory overwriting it could stop your current site from working. However if you want to have www.yourdomain.com/blog then create a folder called “blog” in /public_html , and upload the code into that directory. You can call the directory anything – but if you are writing about for example Social Media, a good address would be /social-media-blog/ giving you keywords in your web address (always try use keywords in your web address) Uploading the code to the server could take up to 10 minutes. Only when your files have been uploaded , visit the web address where you installed your blog, e.g. www.yourdomain.com/blog If everything was uploaded correctly, you will be presented with a screen telling you that you have to create a configuration file – click the button to create your WordPress config file on-line.

Step 3 : Config – Setting up the WordPress Configuration File

You will be asked for the following; – Database Name   … This is the name of the database which you want to link to – Database Username … This is the username for your WordPress database – Database Password … This is the password for the database you wish to use fro WordPress – Database Host … usually localhost but some hosting providers may differ – Table Prefix … set to wp_ but you can change this if you wish for security. If you have entered the details correctly you will then be able to run the Install Script – click the button to start Installing WordPress.

Step 4 : Final Parts of Installing WordPress

For this next step you will be asked for the following; – The Blog Title, e.g. “My First Blog” or “Shanes World of Social Media and Blogging” – Your Email – as administrator you will be notified of major events on the blog – All blog to appear on search engines – Make sure you tick this box so that the WordPress Blog notifies search engines when you post new content. Click Install You will then get a username of admin and a cryptic password. Very important that you now copy this password (ensure it is copied) and click  Log In. Log in as admin with the password you got above. Thats it – Installing WordPress is finished … Congratulations you now have a WordPress Blog installed. I hope to extend this install guide to cover how to add plug-ins and themes in the future.