Another Wordpress Blog

Continuing in the lesson on how to upgrade Blogger to a WordPress installation! Today, I’ll explain how to install WordPress on the web site you got up and running yesterday. (For earlier lessons click Getting a hosting plan and Creating your “website”.

I hope the length of these directions aren’t frighntening you off! What I’m trying to do is give a detailed illustrated explanations for an instruction that some bloggers would explain in this single line:

“To install WordPress at Dreamhost, click ‘Goodies=>OneClick Installation=>Select options’ Then click to activate”.

My explanation will include screenshots, words, and also try to explain how the same advice applies if you use Fantastico instead of “one click installation”.

So, how to actually install WordPress

There are at least two ways to install WordPress: The extremely very easy way and the “hard” way. It’s not that hard.¹ Nevertheless, I advise installing the easy way:

The easy way to install WordPress

1. Use a hosting plan that offers “one click installation” or “fantastico” for WordPress.
2. Fill out an easy form, click a button. Wait 10 minutes.

I use Dreamhost, so I can show you how to do a simple install using their service. If you use another service, you will likely find “Fantastico”, which has very similar steps. (But the screen shots will look different.). If you can’t find either, ask your support service where to find one of these services.

How to use Dreamhost’s ‘one click’ installation.

1. Log into your Dreamhost account. Look at the left hand navigation panel. Click “Goodies”; then click “One-Click Installs”. You will arrive at the “One Click install page.
2. Decide on the directory name for your blog. Say your blog domain name is “myblogdomain.com”. You could put your blog in “myblogdomain.com/blog”. Clever directory, huh? Or, if it’s going to be a knitting blog, you could name it “myblogdomain.com/knitting”. You can call it whatever you want. We’ll assume you picked “blog”.

   You will find a box to enter this directory. If you decided on “blog”, enter “blog”.

3. Scroll down the page. Select WordPress from the list of software you can install.
4. Scroll down more. Fill out the rest of the form: Decide on a database name- it can be anything. “Blog” is fine. Select the hostname they suggest, pick the user they suggest (or create a new one), click install.
   
   

   If no user exists, you will need to create a new one. The name doesn’t matter, you almost never need to remember it, and Dreamhost will make it easy for you to re-discover the name. To have a little bit of extra security beyond your password, pick something a little odd.

Take a break!

You’re finished for now. The “one click installation” will now create the database and perform all file transfers necessary to install WordPress. Dreamhost will send you an email telling you it’s begun the job; they’ll send you another in 10 minutes telling you WordPress is installed.

That email will contain some fairly easy to follow instructions telling you how to customize. You’ll probably figure that out.

However, since you’ve just installed the blog, you’ll naturally find it will contain no entries and look as useless as your blogger blog looked the day you first created it, but I’ll tell you how to fix that in the next lesson.

What will you learn next?

In the next lessons, I’ll give my additional two cents on things you should do to:

1. Improve security.
2. Make your blog prettier.
3. Import your old Blogger blog entries!

After that, the paths you can take with your blog diverge, so no more “beginner” lessons. You quickly find that you understand the WordPress Jargon enough to follow the “very clear” instructions WordPress developers give (You know, like )

---

Footnote:
1. If you really want to install WordPress the hard way: Visit WordPress’s installation instructions.Follow the instructions for the five minute install. I warn you though: you will regret this. If you install the hard way, you will be forced to upgrade the hard way forever. One click upgrade only works if you used one-click installation!

This is a series: Upgrading from Blogger to WordPress Part: I, Part: II , Part: III , Part: IV.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Blogger, Blogging, WordPress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.