How to Install WordPress and Start Your Site’s Journey

If you intend to start a WordPress Site/Blog and have already purchased a Domain and a Hosting account, it is high time you inquired into how to install WordPress to start your site’s journey.

Whichever Hosting platform you use- Dreamhost, Bluehost, Hostinger, HostGator, SiteGround or others- all provide you C-panel featured with built in One-click WordPress installer. This is a software that lets you install WordPress in one click avoiding all hassles. Though told One-click, there are other formalities you have to go through.

Many WordPress tutorials around internet suggest users to use One-click WordPress installer to accomplish the task simply and easily. But I don’t. This is because, if you escape from Manual WordPress installation process, you won’t be able to-

This will unexpectedly limit your commitment and attitude towards WordPress.

So as a promising blogger/site owner you need to learn the Manual process first and then logically One-click installation process would be applicable for you.

Contextually, this post (Post-3) is the part of a series of seven posts that provide ultimate guide on ‘How to start, develop and manage WordPress Blog/Site’.

However, in this tutorial, we’re going to show the basic Manual WordPress installation process step by step.

Install WordPress manually in Hosting Server

To install WordPress manually in Hosting C-panel and reach WordPress Dashboard, you have to go through the following steps-

1. Download WordPress

WordPress structure files are open-source and always free to download since its inception. So don’t follow any via link. Download brand-new latest version of WordPress direct from WordPress.org which is an organization that manage, update and distribute this invaluable software free of cost. On entering Homescreen, you’ll find the WordPress download link on upper-right. Click the link and complete Download in your PC’s Hard Drive.

To learn about WordPress.org doubtlessly, follow this link-

Your downloaded WordPress is a .zip folder named wordpress with version name such as wordpress-5.5.1.zip. This folder is composed of many folders and files. Don’t upzip it. Rather we’re going to unzip it after we complete uploading it in the C-panel’s root Directory.

For this, we need to enter C-panel. First log-in to your C-panel with the credentials provided by your Hosting company. When you’re logged in, C-panel Dashboard appears before you. If you’re new, this dashboard may bewilder you. There are many many features with varied unknown functionalities.

Contextual to say that we assume you already connected your Hosting account with Domain. Domain and Hosting are completely different services and you get two separate accounts. By Domain C-panel, you have to change the two nameservers with the ones provided by your Hosting provider. Thus your Hosting server will be connected with Domain. If you’re yet confused about Domain and Hosting, read up the Post-2 of this series again. Here is the practical guide to connect Domain with Hosting-

However, from Home screen of Hosting C-panel, find the File section and click File Manager under it. The name can slightly be different irrespective of Hosting provider. You can also use Search-box on upper-right to find any feature or tab.

On clicking File Manager, you reach File Manager page. This is the place where all the system files and your hosted files are stored. Here you see many Directories and Folders in the left Navigation Panel. Ignore all except the public_html directory. This public_html is the place where all of the hosted files of your site will be stored. This might be WordPress site or any other site that you developed independently without following any frame.

Click public_html and notice at right View panel. You see all is empty. If you see any files/folders, delete it. To delete any file or folder, just select that by clicking the related row. Then click delete from the Upper menu.

At this stage, let’s the have a look at the File Manager page from the screenshot below-

This is the place where you’ll upload the wordpress files from your Hard Drive.

Listen friend secretly, actually this place is the Hard Drive of your Hosting Server computer; might be located thousand of miles away. But don’t use this just as your hard drive. Always get careful handling files and folder in this drive. Mistaken and careless activities with this drive might result in data loss and consequently destruction of your site.

SO it is wise to upload the wordPress files or any other files to C-panel through FTP channel by using any FTP Client like FileZilla. However we’re going to cover up the process how to Upload and Download files to and from any site with FileZilla in our FileZilla tutorial. Here we’re going to represent the direct uploading process from your HD to C-panel.

For this, do the followings-

• Click Upload button from upper Menu list (see screenshot).
• In the next screen, click SELECT FILE.
• This clicking will redirect to your computer’s File Explorer. From here find the downloaded wordpress folder, select it and Click Open. Your wordpress will start uploading. It may take few minutes.

When Uploading finishes, back to File Manager page. you see the wordpress-5.5.1.zip folder in the View pane of public_html Directory. This is an zipped folder. You need to unzip it.

For this, Do the followings-

• Select the folder by clicking any point of the row.
• Now click Extract on upper-right (see screenshot above).
• You see a screen asking you to determine the file-path where to store the unzipped Folder. Here select the same path (/public_html/) and click Extract files.
• You see a new screen showing Extraction Result. Close this window. You see the extracted or unzipped folders in the same directory.

In this stage, you see both the zipped folder (wordpress-5.5.1.zip) which is empty and upzipped folder (wordpress) in the same place. Now select the upzipped folder and Delete it.

Now only the wordpress folder is left. Is it OK?

No, we don’t need the folder named wordpress but we need all the files and folders inside it. If you now click the wordpress folder, all the files and folders will be shown but in different path (in public_html/wordpress). Do we actually want this?

No, all the files and folders must be stored in public_html where wordpress folder is located at this moment. How do we move it to public_html?

For this, do the followings-

• Click wordrpess folder.
• All the WordPress files and folders will be opened in View pane.
• Now click Select All from upper Menu. All files and folder will be selected.
• Now click Move from the upmost Menu.
• Move screen will appear asking you to determine the file-path. Notice the file-path input field shows /public_html/wordpress.
• Exclude the part wordpress and keep only /public_html.
• Now click Move FIles.
• Now again click public_html Directory name from left panel. You see all of your WordPress files and folders are there.

Now see the total screenshot with all the WordPress files and folders in public_html directory.

Thus you completed all the process of uploading WordPress in C-panel’s root Directory. Now move on to next step-

When I first attempted to Install WordPress and met with this step, I couldn’t but ask this question myself-why to create Database and actually what Database is. I couldn’t accept this prescription blindly but started exploring.

This obligation to find the answers forced me to enter the world of Web Language. At one stage, through huge exploration and practice, I discovered the things my own way. It is not wise to apply some rules in practical field on the basis of assumption. At this, you might get collapsed facing any challenges.

When you want to create a static website, no database is required. Database is essential to build up Interactive Dynamic page in which different data is stored in database and can be retrieved when necessary.

However there is separate language for Database and it is practiced with any Scripting language or Server-side language (such as PHP among many). PHP as a Programing language is widely practiced with MySQL which is not a basic language but a Database Management System on the basis of database language SQL. You might have heard about PHP-MySQL combined platform.

WordPress is basically a PHP-based website structure used to create Dynamic Website or Blog. When you click the php folders inside folders, you see numerous .php files. To use this structure, you have to create MySQL database and connect with PHP.

Nowadays, every Hosting C-panel provides built-in MySQL system. So as we’ve shown above, you just enter C-panel Dashboard, create a database and systematically connect it with WordPress. How the database would function is not your matter. You just create and connect. WordPress system will do the rest in favor of you.

Now question, what role does database play in context of WordPress blogging?

WordPress structure files build-up the site’s infrastructure. But what about Continuous content or posting? When your site is live, you create posts, upload image and your readers make comments. All these regular added elements are stored in Database which can be edited, deleted and manipulated the way you like.

To complete the whole process, you have to-

• Create a new Database
• Add new User
• Add User to Database

Why User?

Database is closely related with User. When you create a database, you must define a User (by Username and Password) who is going to use the database. When that definite user uses the database, he/she can enter it by defined password. Certainly, you can create multiple users allowing privileges (scope of work) fully or partially to work on the same database.

However, to accomplish everything-

• Log in to C-panel Dashboard.
• Find or Search Database section and click MySQL database. You reach MySQL database page (see screenshot below).
• First input a name of your Database and click Create Database. Your Database will be created that will be displayed in a list below.
• Next scroll down and go to Add New User. Fill up the Input fields with your desired Username and Password. Click Create User. A User will be created and that will be listed below.
• Then Scroll down and stop on Add User To Database section. Select your intended user by clicking down-arrow from right. Similarly select the Database.
• Now click Add. You’ll be redirected to a page asking you to tick-out the privileges you like to provide for the present user. If the user is YOU, select All privileges and click Save and come back. Your User is added to Database. Current Users list will be shown below.

Thus you complete the process of Creating a Database.

4. Connect WordPress with Database

Connecting WordPress with database means Inserting the following database info in the definite fields of a WordPress file named wp-config.php.

• Database name
• Database User’s name
• Database Pasword
• Hostname

To do this, go to File Manager page (see screenshot 2) of your C-panel. Have a careful look at the files listed below the folders. Do you see the wp-config.php file?

In our situation, probably you see two such files-

• wp-config.php
• wp-config-sample.php

Here you might encounter two situations. Let me explain-

• No-1: wp-config.php file was not there. Only wp-config-sample.php is provided as a sample file to let you input the Database info in it. But if you Create database after installing WordPress, a new wp-config.php will be created where all of your Database info will automatically get inserted in the respective and relevant fields. In this case you won’t do anything to connect your database with WordPress. Just select the wp-config-sample.php file and Delete it. Thus all will be done.

• No-2: If you Create Database first and Install WordPress later, you won’t see this wp-config.php file but only wp-config-sample.php file will show. In this case or if wp-config.php file is not created for any reason, you have to provide Database info in wp-config-sample.php file and exclude the -sample part from the file name.

For this, do the followings-

• Select the wp-config-sample.php file and Click Rename from upmost Menu (screenshot 2).
• Input field is showing wp-config-sample.php. Now delete -sample portion from the name and click Save. Thus your wp-config.php file will be prepared.
• Now select the wp-config.php file again. Click Edit from upmost Menu. Again click Edit in the next screen. The wp-config.php file will open with a Text Editor (see screenshot 4 below).

Probably all is clear to you. Four input fields are marked with circle. Do what is asked to do in each field-

• 1st: Delete database_name_here portion and input here the name of your database. Don’t write but copy it from Create Database page and paste.
• 2nd: Similarly delete username_here portion and input here the name of the associated User
• 3rd: Delete password_here portion and input the User’s password
• 4rth: Here default Hostname is localhost. You needn’t change it.

Now click Save Changes button on top-right corner of the page. And you’re done. The WordPress system is connected with your created Database.

WordPress isn’t yet installed in the Server-system. In this section, we’ll run the Installation and get prepared to enter the WordPress Dashboard.

For this, open a new tab in the browser. In the address bar type your domain name (such as yourdomain.com) and Enter. What do you see? If everything runs as usual, you see the WordPress set-up windows asking you to select the your preferred language.

To complete the whole process, you have to go mainly through three steps-

• Selecting Language
• Providing Database info
• Providing Site name and Setting Log-in info

First select language as you wish and click Continue.

In the second step, a screen is supposed to be appeared asking for Database information (Database name, Username, Password, Hostname). The system needs these information to generate a wp-config.php file. But, you know, you’ve already configured a wp-config.php file in the previous step. The Installation system must detect this configuration and skip the second step. So whenever you click Continue in Language selection page, you’ll be redirected to the third step. See the screenshot 5 below-

Now input the information carefully. Let me explain-

• Site Title: This is your site title, might not be just your domain name. It is your site’s display name.
• Username: This is not your database username. This is the username by which you’ll enter WordPress Dashboard. So choose a name as username and keep it saved.
• Password: This password is to enter WordPress Dashboard. So fix a password and don’t forget to keep saved. Here you’ll also have a password generating tool. You can utilize it.
• Email: You must input your email address that WordPress will use to communicate with you.
• Search Engine Visibility: If you don’t like your page be visible in Search Engine, tick out the Discourage option. Otherwise, leave it blank.

If all are done correctly, click Install WordPress. Installation will start and ends up in 1 to 2 minutes. On completion of Installation, you’ll see the confirmation as well as welcoming screen which will also ask you to log-in to your WordPress Dashboard.

To log-in to WordPress Dashboard, you can use the Log-in link from the previous welcoming scree. However the permanent way to log-in to WordPress site is: write in the browser’s address bar yourdomain.com/wp-admin/ and hit Enter. You’ll be directed to WordPress Log-in page asking you to input Username and Password. Provide the same that you defined during installation process. You see your WordPress Dashboard is smiling before you.

Hope you enjoyed the presentation and have got a crystal conception on how to install WordPress in any Hosting Server to start your site’s journey.

Did you try it yourself? If so, let me know all your success, failure, problems or challenges you faced by commenting.

Now jump to the next post (Post-4). Have a nice WordPress journey!