In one of my previous postings I explained How To Setup A Business Website In Nine Simple Steps.
In step five of that posting I said,
5) Install WordPress to your site (use the fantastico link in your Hostgator control panel). Why WordPress? It is a simple, free, and flexible site design and management system. Plus Google seems to love WordPress sites == more free traffic to your site.
So next I want to explain how to setup a WordPress blog on your new site.
Setting up a site can be highly technical. FTP. SSH. WebDav. All foreign to most people.
The good news is you don’t need WebDav nor FTP or any other oddball protocols to create a site. That is, if you go with a WordPress setup.
With WordPress driving your site you may never ever need any of those ‘techie’ tools, depending on how you plan to manager your site.
It won’t hurt if you later decide to learn how to use advanced tools. Who knows, there may come a time when you might want to tweak or manage a single file on your site. Knowing alternative ways to do same things is always helpful. Though not required.
But for now, just install WordPress and avoid the need for WebDav/Web Disk and all other advanced (and currently unnecessary) tools.
Here’s How
If you’ve purchased a Hostgator account as I said to do in my previous article, How To Setup A Business Website In Nine Simple Steps, just follow these steps below to get WordPress ‘live’:
1) From within cpanel go to:
- Fantastico De Luxe (scroll or type Fantastico in the cpanel search box to find Fantastico in cpanel)
– select WordPress on the left of Fantastico
– select New Installation towards the right
– Fill in valid info for all the blanks for
‘Install in directory’, this should normally be left blank for all first blog installs unless you’ve uploaded files already
‘Admin access data’, ie username/password
‘admin nickname’,
‘Site name’ (this is the name of your site, NOT your domain name); example Andre’s Web Consulting Website, or some name you want the internet to know your site as.
‘Description’, this is an OPTIONAL subhead that often shows below the name of your site. If you were to specialize in wedding photography you’d want a very short blurb below your name that features that specialty. Or anything else you want communicated below your name.
2) Save all these details, then click ‘Install WordPress’.
Hostgator will install WordPress for you automatically. No work is required of you at this point. Do NOT yet click the ‘setup site’ button that next appears.
3) Make sure when install is done you enter a valid email address in the notification field, so you will receive a record of all these installation and username/password details that you can also print from your inbox – as long as the email reaches you. This is why you should also write the details down. Never know when email may not arrive :/ Do NOT send the email yet.
4) Copy and paste your new WordPress login instructions into a text file or word document, in case the email never arrives.
5) Click final ‘setup site’ button to send the email to yourself.
6) Login in to WordPress to see how login works. Your login details were listed on the last screen of a successful install, right before emailing the details to yourself. You did copy and paste the instruction into a file, didn’t you? Save AND print those. Save the paper somewhere someone else cannot get to and then screw with your site.
That’s all there is to setting up WP.
But you obviously are not yet finished getting your site live.
We still have yet to touch on these three critical areas:
- site design
- content
- site security
Watch for my next posting for more information about each of these steps. And I’ll discuss how to protect your new installation from ‘script kiddie’ attacks and common exploits.
