How to Install WordPress: With or Without Fantastico

WordPress, the open source publishing system based on PHP and MySQL, is the most popular blogging platform on the web.

Installing WordPress With Fantastico on C Panel

If, for any reason, you don’t have the Fantastico option on your C Panel you will need to install WordPress manually, which we’ll look at in the next section.

Step 1.

First, log into your C Panel and look for the Fantastico symbol. The Fantastico symbol is easy to spot since it’s a round smiley face.

Your panel may look different from these screenshots. If this is the case, look for similar symbols for ‘fantastico’ or ‘wordpress’. If you are having trouble, consult your web host provider.

Click on the WordPress link:

In the main content area, click on ‘New Installation’

Step 4.

Provide the following information:

1. Choose the domain where you wish to have the blog installed.
2. Do you want it to be on the top level or yourURL.com/blog? If you want it named ‘blog’ type in ‘blog’
3. You use this field to create a username for the admin area of your WordPress blog. You can choose the username to be “admin.”
4. Create a password.

5. Admin nickname can be whatever you like
6. Enter your main email address
7. Site Name –This appears in the top of the blog (depending on the theme/design you use.) It can be easily changed in settings later on.
8. Description – Always important as it helps search engines identify what your blog is about. Again this can be edited later in your settings on the WordPress dashboard
9. Click “Install WordPress”

Once you have filled out the information above, you will be prompted to finish the Installation.

The final screen gives you a link to your WordPress login page, which always follows this format:

www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin

If you installed WordPress into a sub-folder, then “wp-admin” will come after the sub-folder name:

www.yourdomain.com/your-sub-folder-name/wp-admin

Installing WordPress without Fantastico

Your web host may not provide C Panel access with Fantastico or another easy WordPress installation. If this is the case, you will have to install WordPress manually.

Step 1.

Go to http://wordpress.org/ and click ‘downloads’ from the horizontal menu. Download the zip file of the latest version of WordPress.

Once downloaded, extract the zip file contents to your local computer.

For the initial steps of setting up hosting, using winzip and ftp files, please use these resources:

http://www.winzip.com

http://www.ftpplanet.com/ftpresources/basics.htm

In this example, we will be using the Filezilla FTP program.

Step 3.

Once connected to your web server, upload the WordPress files into the appropriate directory on the web server. This step may take some time.

While the files are uploading or once they’ve finished, the next step is to go to your C Panel for the web hosting and find the MySQL Database wizard. You should see a button that has MySQL on it.

Create a name for your database.

Create a strong password.

We highly recommended that you use the password generator.

Select ‘All privileges’ and note down your full database name, user, and password.

Now you need to put the database information into the wp-config-sample.php file after re-naming it to wp-config.php.

The file will be in the WordPress folder on your Mac or PC. Rename the file first.

Once you have renamed the folder, you need to open the wp-config file icon with a plain text editor (notepad on the PC or simpletext on the Mac.)

Find the default text areas for the database name, username and password as shown in the screenshot.

Step 11.

Change these to the details that you took a note of earlier.

Next you need to upload the wp-config.php to your web server and if the wp-config-sample.php file is still on the server then delete it.

In your browser, run the install script.

*  If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit: http://yoursiteexample.com/wp-admin/install.php

* If you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: http://yoursiteexample.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

Fill out the details (your site title/username/password etc.) and then click ‘Install WordPress.’ You will then be redirected to your login page.

**Learn the basics of WordPress. Check out this on-demand, online course. FREE preview**

About the author:

Jerry Holliday has been involved in marketing and designing websites since 1997 and is a Director and co-founder of a UK based digital marketing agency. He has also authored several books to help businesses thrive online as well as provided video courses about WordPress on Udemy:

Beginners WordPress Course

Intermediate WordPress Course