Install wordpress

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Introduction to WordPress

Planning to launch your own blog website? WordPress is your right choice. An Open Source Blog tool, WordPress, along with multiple sets of blogging features supported by a wide community would target your goal.

Easily handle and control your Blog by using the WordPress intuitive administration. Compose your article/paragraph and post it up by one simple and easy click. You could also benefit from the free WordPress Themes to switch your site from one look to another and practical plugins like scribefire.

  WordPress Installation - Fantastico De Luxe

WordPress is one of the easiest scripts to be installed using our Fantastico De Luxe Tool. To install WordPress, follow these steps and it will guide you through the process:

• Step 1: From within your cPanel, click on the Fantastico De Luxe Icon.
• Step 2: Inside Fantastico Interface, and search for WordPress and click on it. It lies under the “Blog” section.
• Step 3: On the right side, “click New Installation”.
• Step 4: You will be prompted to provide several information one of which is the installation directory. To have WordPress as the front page of your website then leave the directory field blank, else fill in the proper path. Continue filling all the other required information and when done, click on the “Install WordPress” button.
• Step 5: On the next page, a summary of the installation options is displayed, make sure those are the information you inserted earlier and that no errors are displayed. Click on the “Finish Installation” button.

Step 6: The final page displayed, is the page holding the summary of the whole installation process. All these details could be sent to a specific email address for archival. At this stage, you would have successfully installed WordPress and is now available for you to work with.

 WordPress Installation - Manually

If you wish to install WordPress manually, without the help of Fantastico, then the following information will guide you through it step-by-step:

• Step 1: You will have to download the latest stable release of WordPress from http://wordpress.org/download/. You could either download the .zip or the .tar.gz files.

• Step 2: Upload the file to you “public_html” directory via FTP or from within cPanel using the File Manager. This will make WordPress published to your website’s front page after the installation is complete.

Note: You have the option of installing WordPress to a sub-directory of your site, by creating that sub-directory and uploading the installation files to it. This way you will be able to access WordPress through http://www.yourdomain.com/sub-directory.

• Step 3: From within cPanel, and through the File Manager, go to the uploaded file and extract it by using the option: “Extract File Contents”. You also have the option of extracting the files on your computer at the first place and then uploading them to the preferred directory.

• Step 4: Once all the files have been extracted, your next step is to create a MySQL database. You can do that by simply going to the MySQL Databases section from within your cPanel. You may want to look at the MySQL tutorial (hyperlink here) from additional information.

• Step 5: After creating the database, locate the file wp-config-sample.php and rename it to wp-config.php. You should then edit the renamed file and fill in your database connection details:
  • define('DB_NAME', ); // The name of the database
  • define('DB_USER', ); // Your MySQL username
  • define('DB_PASSWORD', ); // ...and password

• Step 6: Using your browser, go to: www.yourdomain.com/extracted_wordpress_directory/wp-admin/install.php

This would execute some commands to setup the required tables for your application. In case any error arises, then you will have to check the wp-config.php file, and give it another shot.

 WordPress Startup Pack - Beginners Area

WordPress main functions: Here is a listing of all the main functions that are available in WordPress. With these functions you can edit and manage your site easily and efficiently:

• Dashboard

The latest news from the WordPress developer's site are listed and displayed on this interface.

• Write

The right place to start writing your articles, posts and comments so that you share them with the rest of the world.

• Manage

Manage your site easily and effectively from this section. The list of all your Posts, Pages, Categories and Comments are displayed for you here. You can read and edit them quickly and easily. From this section, you may also export your blog, import various contents or even edit your Templates.

• Links

You Want to add the links to your favorite sites? Then here is the place to share them with your visitors. You can even organize them into categories, associate them with images and rate them on a scale from zero to nine.

• Presentation

Don’t like the look of your WordPress blog, then add new themes of your choice from the developer’s site and apply them here.

• Plugins

Benefit from available plugins in WordPress to take your blog functions a step further. You can also add new plugins that can be downloaded from the plugins directory. All plugins are easy to use as they have there own instructions and descriptions on their functionality.

• Users

Control and manage your user's profiles. In this section, you can add new users and delete old ones accordingly.

• Options

Fine tuning your blog from this section by changing the configurations and settings. This includes general, writing, reading, discussion, miscellaneous options and customization of permalink structure.

• Import

Easily import posts and comments from other systems to your WordPress blog with simple steps.

WordPress Administrative Area

Managing your blog website could be done from within the administrative area. You have the ability to change your website’s theme, manage comments, post your articles, and so on… To do that, you need to login to the administrative area of WordPress by clicking “Login” hyperlink that can be found under the Meta category or by simply browsing the address: http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.php

Posting in WordPress

One of the main functions of WordPress is writing posts. When writing a post, you will have a Title and the Post box areas. Fill out these areas with the desired ideas and click the “Publish” button to post your notes online..

Creating pages in WordPress

In addition to writing a post in WordPress, you could also create a page. To do that, you simply click on the “Write a page” button from the Write menu.

Managing Categories in WordPress

To better manage your blog, WordPress provides you with the capability of dividing your site into categories. You can do that from the Manage menu, by clicking on Categories

Change the category of a post

Several posts will exist in every category and you would like sometimes to move certain posts to from one category to another. You could do that by going to Manage  Categories  choosing the desired post and clicking on “Edit”. This will provide you with a list of categories available to choose from.

Delete a category

Deleting a category in WordPress is somehow special, as it does not delete the posts from that category. It will only set them to “Uncategorized”.

Post Comments in WordPress

In order to have more interaction between you and the visitors of your blog, WordPress gives the visitors the option commenting on your posts.

Moderate comments

One other option in WordPress is the ability to moderate your readers’ comments. This can be done by accessing the Comments section in the administrator side of your blog.

 WordPress Startup Pack - Advanced Area

Changing your WordPress Theme

Not satisfied with the look of your WordPress blog? Then change its theme from the administrative panel under the “Presentation” section. You may choose from several available templates and simply clicking on the theme’s name or the theme’s thumbnail to apply it.

Uploading a new WordPress Theme

You have a specific theme of your choice and would like to use it? Download the theme of your choice to your local machine then upload it back to your website under the wp-content/themes directory. You could either extract the uploaded file using File Manager, or you could extract it on your local hard drive and upload it via FTP.

After successful upload to the correct directory, access your WordPress administrative backend and click on Presentation. You should be able to see and use the newly updated theme.

 WordPress Plugins

To extend the functionality of your blog, WordPress allows you to install additional Plugins (Add-ons/ Components) to your website. Plugins are files apart from the WordPress basic installation that you download and install to provide additional functionality to your website. Installing a plugin to WordPress is easy and simple. All you need to do is to upload the plugin files to your “wp-content/plugins” directory. Once the files are available in that directory, they will be then displayed in the administrative backend. You can then activate/deactivate them accordingly.

Uninstalling a plugin is also easy. Just delete the plugin files from the “wp-content/plugins” directory. On the other hand, some WordPress plugins require some additional steps than just uploading the files, so bear in mind to refer to the plugin documentation for further instructions.

Including Images in WordPress

Speaking about plugins, WPG2 would be a good example. WPG2 is a WordPress plugin that enables you to post images or photos within you sidebar and blog entries. To download and install additional plugins, you can visit here (plugins hyperlink) Back to WPG2 installation, in order to install WPG2 you need to download and install Imageblock and Imageframes modules first. Downloads can be found here. Once these modules are installed, you can see it included in WordPress Template. Including images in your Sidebar would require some additional steps.

You will need to add the following code to your WordPress Sidebar Template file

• Step 1: Login to your cPanel and open FileManager
• Step 2: Locate the file named: sidebar.php
• Step 3: Open the file for editing and add this line: <?php print g2_sidebarimageblock(); ?>
• Step 4: Save and close the file.
• Step 5: Login to WordPress administrative panel and go to Options  Gallery2  Sidebar Options. There you can set the pictures of your choice that would be included in the Sidebar. Don’t forget to set the Thumbnail Image Size in order to maintain proper image frames.
• Step 6: Click on Update Options to apply the changes made.

WordPress Recent Comments

Another beneficial plugin for WordPress is: “Recent Comments”. It supports WordPress versions 1.5, 2.0, 2.1 and is easily configurable from within the WordPress administrative interface. This plugin can handle trackbacks and comments in separate lists or in combined ones. You can also set the order of comments by date or by postings. “Recent Comments” plugin has various feature which you can benefit of.

Installing Recent Comments

• 'Step 1: download the plugin from here
• Step 2: Unzip it on your computer and then upload the file: “get-recent-comments.php” file to the following directory:/public_html/path_to_your_blog/wp-content/plugins
• Step 3: After the upload is successfully completed, login to WordPress admin panel. Go to the Plugins Section and click “Activate” on the plugin newly uploaded. This will activate the plugin.
• Step 4: If your theme is up-to-date and supports Widgets then just drag and drop “Get Recent Comments” and “Get Recent Trackbacks” into the Sidebar.

In case your theme does not support widgets, you will have to insert the following code into the Sidebar template (wp-content/themes/<name of theme>/sidebar.php):

<?php if (function_exists('get_recent_comments')) { ?>
<li><h2><?php _e('Recent Comments:'); ?></h2>
<ul><?php get_recent_comments(); ?></ul>
</li>
<?php } ?> 

<?php if (function_exists('get_recent_trackbacks')) { ?>
<li><h2><?php _e('Recent Trackbacks:'); ?></h2>
<ul><?php get_recent_trackbacks(); ?></ul>
</li>
<?php } ?>

All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO (Search Engine Optimization) pack is on of the most popular plugins in WordPress. The importance of this plugin is that it optimizes your blog for search engines through automatically generating META tags, optimizing your titles. All these factors, along with others, increase the rank of your website in the search engine results pages. Installing All in One SEO:

• Step 1: Download and unzip the plugin files to your desktop. Upload the extracted directory to your “/wp-content/plugins/” folder via FTP.
• Step 2: Login to your WordPress administrative backend and Activate the plugin through the “Plugins” Section.
• Step 3: Visit your Options sections and go to “All in One SEO”.

 Backup Your WordPress

Performing regular backups for WordPress files and databases is a recommended. To do that, please follow the below instructions:

Backup files

Connect to your website through FTP and copy the WordPress files to your local hard drive. Thus, uploading them back is easy and simple for restoration. If you’re not sure which folders should be copied, then copy the whole “public_html” directory to your local hard drive.

Backup the database

• Step 1: Login to your website’s cPanel.
• Step 2: Locate and press on the PhpMyAdmin icon.
• Step 3: From the list of databases (left of the screen), select the WordPress Database.
• Step 4: From the top menu, click Export.
• Step 5: Apart from the default select options, do select the options “Add Drop Table” and “Save as file.
• Step 6: Click “Go” to start the backup process and to save the file on your local hard drive.

 Upgrading WordPress to latest version

• Step 1: Backup the Database Tables and Files including .htaccess
• Step 2: Deactivate all Plugins from the WordPress administrative backend.

The deactivation process of all plugins should be done, as some of the plugins currently installed might not be compatible with the new WordPress version and thus might create some disruptions.

• Step 3: Overwriting Files
  • Option 1: Download the latest WordPress version from the WordPress official website and upload it to your WordPress directory using FTP. This will ask you if you need to overwrite all the files that exist there. Overwrite the available files EXCLUDING your images and themes.

• • Option 2: Delete all your old WordPress files that are available on the server. Download the latest WordPress version from the WordPress official website and upload it to your WordPress directory using FTP. This will surely overwrite all the available files INCLUDING your images and themes.

Important Notice:

• DO NOT DELETE these folders and files:

wp-config.php file; wp-content folder; wp-images folder; wp-includes/languages/ folder--if you are using a language file, do not delete this folder; .htaccess file--if you have added custom rules to your .htaccess, do not delete it; Custom Content and/or Plugins--if you have any images or other custom content or Plugins inside the wp-content folder, DO NOT delete them.

• DELETE these Files and Folders:

wp-* (except for those above), readme.html, wp.php, xmlrpc.php, and license.txt; files; Typically files in your root or WordPress folder. wp-includes folder; If using a language file remember don't delete the wp-includes/languages/ folder wp-content/cache folder; You only see this folder if you are upgrading FROM WordPress 2.0.

• Step 4: go to http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php and follow the step by step instructions available.
• Step 5: After the upgrade is successfully done, reactivate the plugins one by one from the administrative backend and check their functionality accordingly.

In case a plugin does not function properly, deactivate it and try contacting the author for upgrades.

FREE WordPress Themes

We have created over 50 free wordpress themes for you. Download and use them as you like! :)