How to Install WordPress – Two Methods

In this tutorial, I will teach you on how to install wordpress on your website. You will actually learn two methods of installing it, first is the easy way and the other is the not so easy way. Let us begin with the easy way

Method 1: The Easy Way

The easy way can only be performed if your hosting company provides a one-click wordpress install as option such as Softaculous App Installer in their control panel. Here I will be using Softaculous App Installer to install wordpress on my website, but before doing this, you have to make sure that the domain you will be using is already ready registered and your domain’s name servers pointed to your web host. For this tutorial, I will just be installing wordpress on a subdomain easyinstall.wpislife.com

In your control panel, look for the “SOFTACULOUS APP INSTALLER” or something like that and if you see the wordpress icon then you are in luck. If not, then you need to install it via the not so easy way. Click the wordpress icon then you will be directed to the installation page

When you are already at the installation page, click “Install Now”

You will be sent to another page where you need to enter details for your wordpress website. Enter the details on the following:

Software Setup

• Choose Protocol – select whether you want a website with “www” or without it. If your site has SSL, choose the option with “https”. Mine, I usually choose the one without the “www” and since my site has no SSL I just chosen the normal http:// protocol.
• Choose Domain – choose the domain name on where to install wordpress. In this example, I will install it on the subdomain easyinstall.wpislife.com
• In Directory – here you can choose where your wordpress will be installed. If you want your wordpres to be installed at the root of your subdomain, then leave this blank

Site Settings

• Site Name – this is what your website will be called. Site name appears at the title bar of your browser
• Site Description – this will be the description of your website. Site description also appears at the title bar of your browser when you go to your home page. Site name and site description are normally separated by a dash when seen at your browser’s title bar.

Admin Account and Language

• Admin Username – this will be the username that you will need to login to your wordpress website. I recommend not to use the very common “admin” as your username as this is usually part of a hacker’s list of usernames they use to bruteforce entry into your account.
• Admin Password – this will be your password when you login to your wordpress website. Use a combination of alphanumeric and special characters when generating your account. I recommend you to LEET Type a common word that is very familiar to you and use this as your password (e.g superheroes when LEET types becomes 5up3rh3r035, which has a score of 56/100 in the password strength meter)
• Admin Email – this would be your default email address. Set this up so people can reach you. You can edit this in the future
• Select Language – just choose the language you are comfortable with. The default is English and I did not bother to change it.

Review the details you put in carefully and if you are already satisfied with it, scroll down at the bottom then click “Install”. Also before clicking “Install” You have the option to put an email address on the field below so softaculous can send you your installation details such as your username and password.

After you click install, you will be directed to a new page with a progress bar showing the progress of your wordpress installation. If everything goes right, the installation will be finished in around a minute or so.

There you have it! You can now access your wordpress website with this URL format http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin

Easy isn’t it? That’s why it’s called the easy way, but in case you want some challenge or your webhosting does not offer the Softaculous App Installer, what you can do is follow the steps below which I call the “Not So Easy Way” of installing wordpress.

Method 2: The Not So Easy Way

As  I have told earlier, if your hosting company does not offer you one-click worpress install and you still want to use wordpress then the steps below will guide you to install your favorite CMS. Also before you do this, make sure that you have already registered your domain in your webhost and its name server already pointing to your webhost. For the sake of this tutorial, I will be installing wordpress on a subdomain I created “notsoeasyinstall.wpislife.com”. The steps is not really that difficult to follow and at the same time it is also good to know this because you will be able to learn some useful things such as creating SQL databases. So enough of the talking and let’s start!

Step 1. Download WordPress

The first step on this installation process would be downloading the WordPress script from wordpress.org. Just go directly to https://wordpress.org/download/ and on the right side, you can see the download button. As of this writing, the latest WordPress version is 4.7 so in the download button, the written text is “Download WordPress 4.7” just click the button and the download will proceed right away.

Step 2. Create the SQL Database

To install wordpress on your site, you will also be needing an SQL database to store your wordpress data. To do this, browse for the MySQL Databases at your CPanel homepage then click it.

You will be directed to the MySQL page where you can start creating the sql database and the database user.

To create the database, simply enter a name for your database. The database is in the format “prefix_yourdatabasename”. “Prefix” is always fixed and you cannot edit it while “yourdatabasename” is the one that you can modify. In this example, I entered “notsoeasy” as my database name. Once you’ve entered the database name, just click “Create Database” to create your database.

Now that you have already created the database, the next thing to do is to create the user that will use the database. Just scroll down the MySQL page and you will see the Add New User feature. What I normally do here is use the database name as my username as well, so my username is also “notsoeasy”. Next is to enter your desired password. Once you’re done then just press the “Create User” button.

At this point, you already have the database and the user. The next thing to do is to assign the user to the database, and to do this, just scroll down a little on the MySQL page until you see the “Add User To Database” here, just select the user that you want to assign on the database. In this example the user and database is “notsoeasy” so I just selected those and after that, just press “Add”

After you pressed “Add” you will then be asked to manage the user privilege. Here just check the “All Privilege” then after that click “Make Changes” and you are all set.

At this point you have already created the user, the database, and have successfully assigned the user to the database. The next step is to upload WordPress to your Control Panel

Step 3. Upload WordPress to your Control Panel

After you’ve already downloaded the WordPress script, the next thing you do is upload it to your webhosting. There are two ways to do this: one is via FTP and the other one is via your control panel thru “File Manager”. In this tutorial, I will only discuss the latter as this is the easier way to do it especially for first timers.

In your control panel home, look for the icon for File Manager and click it

You will be directed to the File Manager page. On the left side, you can see the folder directory and look for the folder “public_html” and click it so its content will be shown on the main folder viewing screen. Normally, when you want to install wordpress on your main domain, that would be the folder that you want to open, but since I will be installing wordpress on my subdomain, I will be opening the folder for my subdomain which is the folder “notsoeasyinstall.wpislife.com”

Once you’re already inside the folder, look at the top portion of your CPanel and click “Upload”

A new browser tab will open, then you will be instructed here to select the file that you want to upload. Locate the wordpress file that you just downloaded earlier and just drag it inside the dashed square so the upload will start

Once the upload is finished, just go back to the FileManager, and now you can see the wordpress file on your File Manager folder.

At this point, you have already uploaded the wordpress installer. The next thing you need to do is to unzip the compressed file. To do this, highlight the wordpress installer by clicking it once then you can see the text “Extract” from the top portion of the File Manager change from being unclickable to clickable. Click it to start the decompression process

After you click “Extract” you will be asked where you want to place the extracted file. Make sure to extract it to the root of your folder. In this case, the root is /notsoeasyinstall.wpislife.com then press “Extract File(s)”

After this, you can now see the extracted WordPress folder at the root directory

Although we have extracted the wordpress installer and this is already at the root of your folder, what we actually need is that the content of the WordPress folder SHOULD be on the root. So what we need to do next is to move all the contents of the WordPress folder to the root directory. To do this, double click the folder icon of the wordpress folder, then once already inside the folder, click the “Select All” option then at the top portion of the CPanel, click “Move”

After you clicked “Move”, you will be asked where to move the files, choose the root folder and in this tutorial, the root folder is /notsoeasyinstall.wpislife.com then press “Move File(s)”

After this, we have already moved the files and you can now see the contents of the WordPress folder at the root folder and then we can already start the actual WordPress installation process

Step 4. Installing WordPress

Now that we are all done with the miscellaneous pre-installation steps, we can now proceed with the fun part which is the actual installation.

The first thing we do is to visit our website. In this tutorial, since it is a subdomain, I will enter the url http://notsoeasyinstall.wpislife.com in the browser’s address bar.

The setup will automatically start and WordPress will ask you what language you would use. In this example, I will choose English then just press “Continue”

After that, WordPress will welcome you and reminds you of the requirements before the installation starts. Since we have already have those then we can just continue by pressing “Let’s go!”

After you press “Let’s go!”, you will be directed to the next page where you need to input the following:

• Database Name
• Username
• Password
• Database Host
• Table Prefix

You will only need to provide the Database Name, Username, and Password then the last two requirements, just leave it as is, after that press “Submit”.

When nothing goes wrong, WordPress will tell you that everything you entered is correct and we can now proceed with the installation. Just click “Run the install” to proceed

After you clicked “Run the install”, you will be directed to the next page where you need to enter the following:

• Site Title
• Username
• Password
• Your Email

Take note that I disregarded the last item because normally, you would want your website to be visible to search engines so you just leave it as it is but in case you have some privacy issues and you don’t want the search engines to index your site then put a check on the box beside it.

This step is just like the one in the Softaculous App Installer. Also take note that the Username and Password here is NOT your SQL database details and you need to provide a different one here. After you finished entering your details, just press “Install WordPress” and you’re good to go!

After you press “Install WordPress” which is actually the last step, in a minute or two, you will be redirected to your dashboard which signifies that the installation was successful and complete, and you can now use it ans start blogging on your freshly installed WordPress website!

There you have it! You can now install your own wordpress website using the two methods I showed here. But if after you tried to follow the above instructions and you are still having trouble installing it on your own, then what I can provide you is my WordPress installation service that you can purchase for a very reasonable price and the installation also comes free with my favorite Genesis WordPress Premium Theme so you really have nothing to lose 🙂

Thoughts, ideas and suggestions? Hit the comment below!