The Basic Install of Wordpress


Installing WordPress is neither difficult nor time consuming, and the available instructions on wordpress.org are more than adequate to guide you through the basic install. That being said, there are some things that you should know and take into account if you want to set up the perfect WordPress site. Therefore, this chapter is all about giving you the solid platform you need for further development. WordPress in itself is a powerful publishing tool, and you can supercharge it withthemes and plugins. Running a site on top of WordPress is all about that, so it is important to get the basics right so you can build on top of it. WordPress is the bricks and mortar of the site, but themes and plugins are what make it tick for real.

Also, before moving on, remember that “WordPress” in this article means the stand-alone version of Word- Press available for free from wordpress.org. Don’t get this mixed up withthe multiuser version, called WordPress MU, which is touched upon briefly later, nor with AutoMattic hosted version on wordpress.com. this article is all about the main version available from wordpress.org, and more specifically withversion 2.8 in mind.

The Basic Install

As you probably know, installing WordPress is a breeze. There is a reason the “five-minute install” PR talk isn’t getting blasted to pieces by the otherwise so talkative blogosphere. In fact, the only reason that the install should take that long is because uploading the files sometimes takes time due to slow Internet connections or sluggish Web hosts. Most likely you’ll have gone through a fair amount of WordPress installs yourself, so I’ll be brief on this matter.

First, you need to make sure that your system meets the minimum requirements. The most recent ones can be found here: wordpress.org/about/requirements/. If your host supports PHP 4.3 or higher, and runs MySQL 4.0 or higher, then you’re good. However, you should make sure your host has mod_rewrite installed since that will be needed for prettier links.

To install, you’ll need the following:

To install, unzip your WordPress download and upload the contents of the wordpress folder to your destination of choice on your server. Then, open wp-config-sample.php and find the database parts where you fill out the database name, and the username and password with write privileges. This is what wp-config-sample.php looks like:

 define('DB_NAME', 'putyourdbnamehere');
 // The name of the database define('DB_USER', 'usernamehere');
 // Your MySQL username define('DB_PASSWORD', 'yourpasswordhere');
 // ...and password define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
// 99% chance you won't need to change this value

Next, still in wp-config-sample.php, find the part about Secret Keys. This part will start with a commented information text titled “Authentication Unique Keys” followed by four lines (as of writing) where you’ll enter the Secret Keys. This is a security function to help make your install more secure and less prone to hacking. You’ll only need to add these keys once, and while they can be entered manually and be whatever you like, there is an online generator courtesy of wordpress.org that gives you random strings with each load. Just copy the link (api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/) to the generator from your wp-config-sample. php file and open it in your favorite Web browser. You’ll get a page containing code looking something like this:

 define('AUTH_KEY', 'PSmO59sFXB*XDwQ!p3K{,M>E;[ +,22O?Lnarb'); 
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY', 'c}gR{389F*IG@/V+hg1 45J0E~t0-C*II');
define('NONCE_KEY', 'gz2D:n52|5wRvh)e-E*}K:ygp4wI*.QHO-mUV_PR|6M');

Copy the contents from the generator page and replace the code shown below in wp-config-sample. php with them:

 define('AUTH_KEY', ''); define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY', '');
 define('LOGGED_IN_KEY', ''); define('NONCE_KEY', '');

By replacing the code above with the one from the generated page, you’ve made your install a little bit more secure from those nasty hackers.

The last thing you may want to change in wp-config-sample.php is the language. WordPress is in English (US English to be exact) by default, and if you’re Swedish you would naturally want the default language to be Swedish, if you’re German you would want German, and so on. To change the language, you’ll need a language file (these are .mo files; most of them can be found here) that you then upload to wp-content/language/. You also need to alter this little snippet in wp-config-sample.php to let WordPress know what language you want it to be in:

 define ('WPLANG', '');

What you need to do is add the language code: this is the same as the language file, without the file extension. So if you really did want your install in Swedish, you’d download the sv_SE.mo, upload it to wp-content/languages/, and then pass the language to the WPLANG function, like this:

 define ('WPLANG', 'sv_SE');

This won’t necessarily make the themes or plugins you use display in your language of choice, but WordPress and its core functionality will, as will any code that supports it.

And that’s it! Rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php, and point your Web browser to your install location. This will show a link that initiates the install procedure, where you’ll fill in the weblog title, the admin user’s e-mail address, and choose whether or not the weblog should be open to search engines for indexing (most likely this will be the case, but if you want to fiddle with it first, then disable it; you can enable it in the settings later). After this, you’ll get an admin username and a random password (save that!) and hopefully a success message along with a link to the weblog. Not very complicated, right?

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This article was sent to us by: Samantha Harley at 09072010

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