Wordpress has become one of the most popular content managemnt service available online, and its popularity is increasing day-by-day due to its ease of use, features and reliability. So if you’re looking forward to create your own blog, then wordpress might just be the thing you’re looking for.

Installing wordpress is not a tough job, infact its far easier than you might be thinking. Before starting, let me clear you a fact that if you’re starting a blog just for fun, or you might be interested in trying out wordpress, than a more hassle-free approach for you to make an account on wordpress.com as it would save you the trouble of finding a hosting service. The disadvantage would be that you won’t be able to access FTP or edit the code of your blog.

On the other hand, of you’re serious with blogging and want a full control of your blog, then the first thing to do is to find a Web Hosting Service, which allows you to access the FTP and gives you a database too. When you’ll have both, you’ll be able to Install the wordpress on it.

How to do it?

Follow the steps carefully for a successful installation.

Get a Hosting Service:

If you’re interested in giving blogging just a try, then I suggest you go for dree hosting services. You could plenty if you google “free web hosting service” sign up with anyone, and make sure they allow you to control your FTP server and give you a mSQL or mySQL database. You can easily check these suff with the website before signing up, its generally available in there features section.

If you’re interested in paid services, which offer more reliability and control, then you can google one too, and sign up with them. They are most likely to give you all the required features.

Get your FTP Account Information:

Find your “FTP Account Information” in the email

Hosting/FTP User Name: your username
Web Site URL: your domain URL
FTP Site URL: your FTP URL
Your Web Site Visitor Statistics: Your stats URL

Create MySQL database

• Login to your hosting account
• Click on Hosting and chose My Hosting Account
• Find your domain name and click on Manage Account
• In the upper menu click on Databases and chose MySQL
• Click on Create Database
• Write description, chose username and password

After the database has been established, check the following credentials:

MySQL Database Information Status:
Setup Host Name: your host name
Database Name: database name you have chosen
Database Version: 4.1
Description: description you have chosen
User Name: username you have chosen

Its better if you copy the details on a notepad so that it could be used later.

Download WordPress

• Go to WordPress.org and download the latest version (WordPress 2.8)
• Unzip the downloaded file
• Now you have a WordPress folder
• Find the wp-config-sample.php file and rename it to wp-config.php

Open wp-config.php in text editor andreplace this information:

// ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define(’DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere‘);
/** MySQL database username */
define(’DB_USER’, ‘usernamehere‘);
/** MySQL database password */
define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘yourpasswordhere‘);
/** MySQL hostname */
define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost‘);

All these details would be provided from your web hosting provider, as previously stated.

Now find following in your wp-config.php:

define(’AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);

define(’SECURE_AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);

define(’LOGGED_IN_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);

define(’NONCE_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);

Go to WordPress secret key and replace the details shown there with the above ones. Save that wp-config.php after the editings.

Login to your web hosting

• Get a FTP client (Search Google)
• Open FTP client and login to your hosting account using your FTP account information
• Place all the files from your WordPress folder onto your server’s httpdocs folder

When the transfer is complete, go to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php

There you’ll see a welcome screen of wordpress installation asking for your username and password. Now perform the following steps:

• Fill in your Blog Title
• Type your E-mail
• Make sure your Allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati is checked
• Click on Install WordPress
• Next screen you see should say Success! and should give you your Username and Password.
• Click on Log In.
• Now you will see your blog’s Log In page. Make sure to bookmark that URL.
• Fill in the Username and Password you have just received
• Click on Log In.

Now you should see the dashboard. If you do, then it means that you have successfully installed wordpress on your server and now its ready to use.

If you encounter any problems while performing this procedure, please feel free to leave your comment below