Although a majority of hosting companies offer a way to install WordPress with one of the one-click installers, such as Softaculous, or Fantastico DeLuxe; there are still some hosts out there who don’t offer one-click WordPress installation.
In such cases, knowing how to install WordPress manually is definitely a plus.
Luckily, the process really is simple and today I will walk you through it step by step.
You will need:
- An FTP client of choice (Filezilla is great free cross-platform client for the job)
- A copy of WordPress
- Your sites FTP information (provided by your host)
How to manually install WordPress
Step 1:
The first thing we need to do is download WordPress from their official website, and then extract the contents of the zipped folder to a location of your choice.
I recommend Desktop for this, as it greatly facilitates finding the folder.
Step 2:
Next, we need to create the database that will hold our WordPress install, and the user for the same database. Log in to your hosts, CPanel, scroll down till you see MySQL Database Wizard and click on that icon:
Step 2a:
Creating a database is a relatively simple process. On the first screen, enter your desired database name, and make sure to write it down somewhere as you will need it later on:
Step 2b:
Click on next step and create the user for the database:
Step 2c:
Finally, assign all privileges to the created user and connect it with the database:
Okay now that that’s done, it’s time to actually install WordPress!
Step 3:
Download Filezilla client if you haven’t already, and connect to your site via FTP.
Once you’re connected, browse to your site’s public_html folder and double click on it. Aside from cgi-bin folder there should be nothing there. That’s the directory we want to install WordPress in the root level of your domain.
On your computer browse to the extracted WordPress folder and select all of it’s contents. Drag those files into public_html folder like so:
This usually takes a few minutes, so go ahead and grab a cup of coffee while you wait on it.
Step 4:
After the files have been transferred, open up your browser, or a new tab and type in your domain name. You should be greeted with the WordPress language selection screen.
Select the desired language for your installation and click on next. You should now be looking at the install screen:
Step 5:
Click on Let’s go! and enter the necessary information:
For most hosts, database host is usually localhost, but double check with your hosting provider just to be sure.
Side note: in case this doesn’t work for some odd reason, you can create wp-config manually, by simply editing wp-config-sample.php that’s in your WordPress folder and saving it as wp-config.php:
After that proceed with the next step.
Step 6:
Once your config file has been created, all you need to do is proceed with the installation:
Step 7:
On the next screen, enter your site title, and tagline (don’t forget, you can always change them later on), your desired username and password and click on Install WordPress.
You will be greeted with the success screen from which you can proceed to log in to your new WordPress site:
Final thoughts
Congratulations! You just learned how to manually install WordPress.
Before wrapping up this post I want to mention a few things.
Please, make sure to pick anything but ‘admin’ as your username, because that is one most commonly attempted usernames with hackers trying to execute a brute-force attack on any WordPress site.
Sadly, there are still many people out there who leave the username as admin. It’s one small tweak you can do right from the beginning that will make your site more secure.
Secondly, make sure to pick a strong password. If you can’t think of one yourself, use a password manager like LastPass to generate a strong password for you – you can also use it to save your passwords.
A good rule of thumb is a password consisting of at least 8 characters, both uppercase and lowercase letters, and special characters such as #, $ and similar.
Note: you can further improve your security by using a specialist security plugin, this post covers some of the best.
The post How To Manually Install WordPress: A Step By Step Guide appeared first on WP Superstars.