As one of the most well-known blogging software programs, WordPress is a great start for anyone who wants to start a blog or a website. While today’s web hosting providers, including WordPress itself, offer a one-click blog setup, there are still a ton of benefits in self-installing WordPress.
These benefits include knowing the version you are working with, has full control of the features that can be useful to blogging, and backup options for your database and files.
Before self-installing WordPress, you need to check whether you have PHP v5.2 or updated, MySQL v5.015 or updated, or an Apache mod-rewrite module that is needed to create URLs that are search engine friendly.
Steps to Self-Installing WordPress:
- Get or buy a domain name
- Download WordPress from the .org (not .com) website.
- Unzip the downloaded installation package
- Set up your FTP software
- Designate a folder in your PC to unzip WordPress into
- Have a plain text editor – we recommend Notepad++ for this matter.
- Set up your database for web hosting – take note of the database name, username, password, and hostname.
- Unzip the WordPress package and set it up.
- Setup WordPress configuration file
- Upload WordPress files
- Begin installing WordPress
- Start exploring your self-installed WordPress blog.