What is Word Press?

WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. WordPress is the official successor of b2 cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of lead developer Matt Mullenweg. How to setup, install and configure Wordpress?

Introduction:

WordPress is a bunch of PHP scripts and HTML code that work together to create a web log. Whatever the merits of other popular web log packages (e.g. MovableType, Drupal) WordPress is the easiest to install, configure and customize.

Assumptions:

• using
  the latest WordPress code
• using a
  Linux/Apache web server
• PHP 4.2
  or higher is installed on the web server
• using
  MySql 4.0 or higher for a database

In Summary:

1. Download
   latest WordPress code
2. Create
   an empty MySql database on the web server
3. Create
   the directory structure on the web server
4. Unzip/untar
   files and upload to install directory
5. Edit
   configuration script
6. Point
   your browser to the setup script
7. Follow
   prompts in browser window

In Details:

1.

Download latest WordPress codeYou can download wordpress-2.1.tar.gz (for Linux) or wordpress-2.1.zip (for Windows) from the WordPress Web Site.If you
are uploading the installation files FROM a Windows workstation TO a Linux server, you’ll want to download the Windows version (.zip) of the installation files.You can see a complete listing of all the files here.

2.

Create an empty MySql database on the web serverThe procedure for doing this depends on the control panel software your host uses. Essentially, you want to create a database and add a user with ‘All Privileges’. Our user in this example installation is boyjojo.You can see the procedure for creating a database from the command line here.

3.

Create the directory structure on the web serverFor example:

4.

NOTE: admin and cgi-bin have nothing to do with WordPress. wp02 is our newly-created directory into which we will copy the WP files. You can name wp02 whatever you like, as long as it’s a subdirectory of public_html. Do not use cgi-bin as an install directory.Using the above directory structure means you will access your blog with the following URL:http://www.mywebsite.com/wp02/

Why is it
better to install in wp02 rather than public_html?

Keeping your WordPress files segregated helps avoid problems. It improves both compatibility and scalability by keeping all your non-WP pages separate from your blog content. And it gives you the option to install several blogs on the same web site, or use a Welcome Page.

If you want visitors to arrive at your blog when accessing http://www.mywebsite.com (without having to add /wp02/ on the end), you can easily do this.

Put the
following line of code (and nothing else) in your public_html/index.php:

<?php
header(”Location:http://www.mywebsite.com/wp02/”); ?>

and your visitors will be transparently directed to your blog in /wp02/.

If you want to use your public_html/index.php as a Welcome Page, simply include a link to your blog from that page. There are endless possibilities for customization using this directory structure.

Of course, you can install in public_html if you want to; just modify the rest of this tutorial accordingly.

5.

Unzip/untar and copy (or FTP) everything to the wp02 directoryThe directory structure will look like this after the upload:

IMPORTANT: Make sure the wp02 directory and all directories under it have 755 permissions (chmod 755 wp02). Most web hosts will have 755 permissions on directories by default, but you should check if you want to avoid problems. The scripts within the directories should have 644 permissions (only in rare cases will you need to modify a script’s permissions).You can see an example of WP folder and file permissions here.

6.

Edit wp-config.php configuration scriptWP ships with the wp-config.php script named as:wp-config-sample.phpYou need to rename this to:wp-config.phpYou also need to know the name of the database and the username of the database account that WP will use (here we are using wp02 and boyjojo).

Below is a
sample wp-config.php:

bubba
[/home/boyjojo/public_html/wp02] # cat wp-config.php

// ** MySQL settings ** //
define(’DB_NAME’, ‘wp02‘); // The name of the database
define(’DB_USER’, ‘boyjojo‘); // Your MySQL username
define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘mypasswd‘); // …and password
define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this
value

// You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique prefix
$table_prefix = ‘wp02_‘; // Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!

// Change this to localize WordPress. A corresponding MO file for the
// chosen language must be installed to p-includes/languages.
// For example, install de.mo to wp-includes/languages and set WPLANG to ‘de’
// to enable German language support.
define (’WPLANG’, ”);

/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

define(’ABSPATH’, dirname(__FILE__).’/');
require_once(ABSPATH.’wp-settings.php’);

7.

Point your
browser to:
http://www.mywebsite.com/wp02/wp-admin/install.phpThis will launch the install script. The install script will produce output in your browser window and perform a number of installation tasks.

8.

Follow
prompts in browser windowBelow are the 3 pages you will see:First Page:

Second Page:

Third Page:

9.

That’s it!
Now you can log in and publish to the world!

WP core file
permissions