Starting Your Own Blog | Part 2

In Part 1, you registered a domain name and changed DNS server settings. Now you’ll be uploading WordPress and configuring it to get your blog up and running.

Download WordPress

First you will need to download the WordPress zip file from wordpress.org. The current version is 2.7.1 at the time of this writing. Once finished you’ll want to unzip the file to a folder on your computer.

Create a Database

WordPress will use a MySQL database to store your blog posts among other things. You’ll need to create one on your web server.

1. Login to your web server admin site.
2. Find the link for MySQL Administration and click on it.
3. Click on New Database. You’ll need to provide a description and specify a MySQL 5.0 database. Depending on your web server you may need to provide other information such as username and password.
4. Note down the database name, username, password, and host name.

Now you need to tell WordPress about the database.

1. Find the file named wp-config-sample.php where you unzipped the WordPress files. Open this file in a text editor like wordpad.
2. At the top of the file you’ll find lines starting with DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, and DB_HOST. These name a followed by an equal sign with  a single quote for the value. Fill in the values for your own database that you got from the steps above.
3. Important – save this file as wp-config.php.

Upload WordPress

Before we can upload WordPress to your web server you’re going to need two things:

1. A FTP client such as Filezilla – download and install it if you haven’t already.
2. A FTP username and password to login to your server. Login to your web server admin site and go to FTP access. There should credentials already created for you or you can create one.

Open Filezilla. Go to File ->Site Manager and create a new site. Put your domain name under host and your username and password from step 2 above. Hit connect and you should now see a folder on the right hand side window for the remote site.

On the left hand window navigate to where you saved the wordpress files. On the right hand side window go to the folder where you indicated your domain is hosted – this only applies if you indicated a folder when setting up the domain on your web server in Part 1. Upload all the files and folders by selecting all the files on the left window and dragging them to the right window. Once completed perform the next step immediately.

Install WordPress

Open your browser and type in your domain name in the address bar. You should see the WordPress installation screen. If you see a database connection error go back and double check the steps above for creating the database. You will be asked for your email address and a blog title. Hit next and you will be given the admin username along with a random password. Write this password down. Proceed to the login screen and put in the admin username along with the password. Once you login you will see the WordPress dashboard.

You should now see the default WordPress theme and a default entry when you go to your domain. To login to the WordPress administation you want to go to youdomainname.com/wp-admin or you can click on the Login link at the bottom right of your web site.

You’re All Done. Now what?

That’s it, you now have your very own WordPress blog on your domain. You can start writing your posts and publishing them.

You may want to install some additional themes to change the look of your blog. There are over 700 WordPress themes for download. Now that you know a bit about FTP – installing themes are easy.

1. Download a theme.
2. Unzip the zip file.
3. Open Filezilla and connect your web server.
4. On the right hand window open the wp-content folder and the theme folder.
5. Drag the unzipped theme folder to upload them.
6. Go to your WordPress administation site and click on Appearance to select the new theme you uploaded.

WordPress is pretty easy to learn and you can easily change the look and feel through themes, and add functionality using Plugins. Hit me up with questions in the comments section if you have any. Happy blogging.