How To Manually Install WordPress Blog on any Web-Hosting

WordPress installation these days is a piece of cake. With add on script offered by your host like Fantastico, Simple script, it hardly takes more than 2-3 minutes to get started with a WordPress blog. Though, today we are going to learn how we can install WordPress manually. It’s always a good idea to learn WordPress manual installation, if you offer such services or using any hosting which doesn’t offer you such single click WordPress installation scripts.

I’m not going to discuss the benefits of manual WordPress installation, but as added by many expert, manual installation is more secure than installing wp using Fantastico.

Things required to Manually install WordPress Blog:

We need a couple of things handy before we start with the process. So, here is the list of things, which you should be prepared with.

• WordPress software: Download latest version of WordPress from official download page.
• FTP Access of your hosting account
• cPanel access to create Database and DB user and password. (In this tutorial, I’m using www.Hostgator.com as an example)
• So I assume, you have everything ready and you have downloaded WordPress too.

Create Database and Database User:

I believe for non-technical user, this step is the only step where you will be getting little confused. So, follow this step by step guide and screenshot and create your first DB and associate a username and password to it. This is one setting, which we need to change in Wp-config later in this WordPress manual installation tutorial.

Almost, all hosting with cPanel offers MySQL database wizard, which makes it easier. Login to your cPanel and click on MySQL database wizard under database, and create a database.

Create next step and give a username and password to your newly created database. My suggestion, use password generator there to create a strong and complex password.

Once you click on Create user, next step is to give privilege to the users. On the next page, click on all privileges to newly created user and click on next step.

That’s it and you have created a database and username for your new WordPress installation. Make sure, you note down all the details: DB name, DB username and DB password in a notepad, as we will be needing it in next step.

Complete WordPress manual Installation Tutorial:

So, I assume we are all set to move ahead. From here, we can take 2-3 different steps to move ahead with manual installation of WordPress. You can either extract .zip file directly and edit wp-config file, as shown below and upload complete WordPress folder to root of your domain (Public_html), or you can use cPanel file manager to extract and edit the content of wp-config file. Anyways, the only step which we need here is changing the wp-config content and upload it to right folder on your FTP. You can use free FTP client like FileZilla, to do it. But to keep this tutorial simple, I will be using Web hosting cPanel. For Godaddy, the dashboard screen will change a bit, but more or less, steps are the same.

Uploading WordPress to your cPanel:

Now, under your cPanel, go to file manager  and upload the WordPress zip file which you have downloaded. Once you have uploaded the WordPress.zip file, click on extract and extract everything to public_html directory. (Note: it should be first WordPress installation on your cPanel). If it’s an add on domain, extract files to the directory which you have given to add on domain. Usually public_html/addon-domain name.

To make this step simple, I’m extracting everything under public_html directory.

Under your cPanel hosting, you can go to Files > File manager and browse to public_html directory and upload the WordPress.zip file.

Usually, file extractor will create a directory name “WordPress’ and extract all files under it. Since we are doing installation on main domain, (www.domain.com) and not (www.domain.com/WordPress), we will move all files to directly under /public_html director by using move command. Browse to /public_html/WordPress using file manager again, select all files and click on move at the top, and move all files to public_html.

Editing WordPress Wp-config file:

Now, next step is to fill out the database information in Wp-config file. You can make a copy of wp-config-sample.php and rename it to wp-config.php. Now, select wp-config.php and click on edit:

In this file, here are couple of things which you have to change:

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //

/** The name of the database for WordPress */

define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');

/** MySQL database username */

define('DB_USER', 'username_here');

/** MySQL database password */

define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');

/** MySQL hostname */

define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Now, replace database_name_here, username_here, password_here with the details which we created in step 1.

Db_host usually remains Localhost in most of shared hosting like Blue host, Dreamhost & Hostgator. Once you have added those details, click on save changes.

Executing WordPress Manual installer script:

Till now, we have done all the basic settings which we need to install WordPress manually. Now, all we need to do is run the WordPress install script, give a user and password to your wp-admin and do some basic settings. Here is last thing which you need to do to have your WordPress blog up and running:

Go to this URL:

http://domain.com/wp-admin/install.php (replace domain.com with your actual domain name here). First select the language of WordPress installation:

On the next screen, give a username and password to your WordPress installation. Try avoiding giving admin as username and use a complex password. Once everything is set, you can login to your admin dashboard by going to following link. Replace domain.com with actual domain name:

http://domain.com/wp-admin

Now, here are some of the basic posts and steps which you should be following to move ahead with it:

• 8 essential settings after Installing WordPress
• How to install WordPress Plugin
• How to Install WordPress theme
• Basic WordPress plugins for every WordPress Blog

and don’t forget to bookmark our WordPress guide, which will give you all basic guide you need to use WordPress.

Anyhow, if you have to select between Fantastico/Simple script vs. WordPress manual install, I would suggest go for script method, which we have already explained earlier : How to install WordPress on Hostgator as it’s easy and will not take 4-5 minutes maximum. Though, some Webhosting companies doesn’t offer cPanel (What a shame!), in that case you can consider using this WordPress manual installation guide.

Incase,  for some reasons you can’t install WordPress manually and are stuck at some point, feel free to ask via comment.