I thought it might be useful to document the process of setting up this blog on my site as I went along.
Step 1: I found this page on WordPress.org which details the procedure for installing WordPress on your own site (this assumes that you have your own domain, and FTP access to upload all of the WordPress files to your own site). Now, being a graphic designer, and itching to get on with the task of customising the page to make it look all arty and such, it’s fair to say that I only read the instructions briefly, so this might all end in disaster, but here goes…
Step 2: I downloaded WordPress 2.6.2 to my local machine (I’m using one of my Macs – a Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 – OSX v10.4.10) and unzipped the file.
Step 3: Using the control panel on my website supplied by my hosting company, I added a mySQL database – as this was the first database I’d added, all I had to do was select ‘default’ and there it was. Surprisingly easy so far. From reading the WordPress documentation I wondered if I needed to have a database called ‘wordpress’, but it seemed not so – I checked this by emailing my hosting support who replied within minutes (hats off to Mark at Supanames). The name of the database doesn’t matter, provided you enter it correctly in the wordpress config file (see Step 4 below).
Step 4: Now this bit I’m guessing wouldn’t be for the faint-hearted, but if you’re happy editing files that have lots of $’s and /’s and other gobbledegook in them then it’s quite straightforward. In the unzipped WordPress files you’ll find one called wp-config-sample.php – you need to edit this to include the name of your mySQL database, and your username and password. Also you need to set 3 secret keys – but instructions on what to do are included in the file itself. Once you’ve finished this, save the file as wp-config.php in the same folder where you found the original (wp-config-sample.php) file.
Step 5: I created a directory on my site called ‘blog’ in the top directory – so my blog should hopefully appear at www.mikeafford.com/blog . Then I FTP-ed the entire contents of the wordpress folder on my local machine into the ‘blog’ folder on the remote server. Another way of doing this would have been to rename the ‘wordpress’ folder to ‘blog’ and uploaded the folder itself to the top directory on your server (assuming you don’t already have one called ‘blog’ there already. Naturally enough.)
Step 6: In my browser I typed in the URL of my blog (mikeafford.com/blog) and there was the WordPress set-up page all ready for me to enter a title for the blog and my email address. With that completed, moments later the bog-standard blog appeared…
At this point my wife walked in and I proudly showed her my new blog. “That looks really good” she said.
I wonder if she’ll say the same after I’ve fiddled with the design…
Right now I’m having a few issues with uploading images, which may well be the subject of my next post.