A good first step is to make sure you have an environment setup that is ready for WordPress. This means two things: making sure that you verify that the server meets the minimum requirements, and making sure that your database is ready.

For WordPress to work, your web host must provide you with a server that does the following two things:

Additionally, these minimum requirements tend to change every once in a while. The most current requirements can always be found at http://wordpress.org/about/requirements/.

You can find out if your host meets these two requirements by contacting your web host. If your web server meets these two basic requirements, you're ready to move on to the next step.

As far as web servers go, Apache is the best. However, WordPress will also run on a server running the Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services) server (though using permalinks will be difficult, if possible at all).

Once you have checked out your environment, you need to download WordPress from http://wordpress.org/download/. On that page, the .zip file is shown as a big blue button because that'll be the most useful format for the most people. If you are using Windows, Mac, or Linux operating systems, your computer will be able to unzip that downloaded file automatically. (The .tar.gz file is provided because some Unix users prefer it.)

After you download the WordPress .zip file, extract the files, and you'll get a folder called wordpress.

If you are upgrading an existing installation of WordPress, you should probably leave this chapter and instead read the section on Upgrading WordPress in Chapter 12, Creating a Non-blog Website Part Two – Community Websites and Custom Content Elements.

Now, we need to upload all these files to our web server using any FTP client (or simply put them in our local server directory on our local computer). FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. There are several FTP clients available on the Internet, which are either freeware (no cost) or shareware (a small fee). If you don't already have an FTP client, try one of these:

You can also use the popular web-based FTP application net2ftp at http://www.net2ftp.com. These services are useful if you don't want to install a desktop application on your computer. You can also check if your host provides browser-based FTP software.

Using your FTP client or service, connect to your FTP server using the server address, username, and password provided to you by your host. Next, open the folder where you want WordPress to live. You may want to install WordPress in your root folder, which will mean that visitors will see your WordPress website's home page when they go to your main URL – for example, http://yoursite.com. Alternatively, you may want to install WordPress in a subfolder; for example, http://yoursite.com/blog/.

On the left side, you will see the files from your local folder, and on the right side you will see your remote folder. (Note: the FTP client you are using may have a slightly different layout, but this is the general idea.)

Now select all of the WordPress files on your local machine from the left pane, and drag all of them to the right pane. You can watch as your FTP client uploads the files one at a time and they appear in the right panel. This could take a few minutes, so be patient!

If you're installing WordPress on your local server, just be sure to place the WordPress files in the correct webroot directory on your computer.

Once all of the files are done uploading, you're ready to do the installation.

Now it's time to install WordPress through the famous five-minute installation (the fact that WordPress can be installed in five minutes or less is widely advertised on the official WordPress website). If you access your WordPress URL via your browser, you will see a short introduction message instructing you to create a file named wp-config.php by clicking on the button labeled Create a Configuration File. After doing so, you will be presented with another screen, informing you about all the required details you'll need in order to complete the installation successfully.

Currently, these required details consist of the following:

The big question, therefore, is where to get all this information from. Simple answer—your web host. Most of the large web hosts offer a way to create your own databases via an online control panel, with usernames and passwords of your choice. If you're not sure how to do this, just e-mail or call your hosting provider for assistance. Professional support teams will be glad to help you with this.

Once you have those four things, you can press the Let's go! button and proceed to the next step of the installation. This is what the main setup form looks like:

As you can see, I filled out mine with the details mentioned as an example a couple of paragraphs above. Of course, your details will be different. Also, one more thing worth pointing out: there's an additional field labeled Table Prefix. This is the default prefix that every table in your database will have before its name. The default value in that field is wp_. I advise you to change this to whatever two-letter or three-letter word you wish and end it with an underscore (_), just as a safety precaution against standard database attacks on known WordPress tables. The one I used is wtb_. One more additional reason for using a custom prefix is to enable you to take advantage of the WordPress multisite feature (if you plan to launch more than one site with a single WordPress installation, which is also possible). In such a case, you'll need to use different prefixes in your different installations.

After clicking on the Submit button, you will be redirected to the final confirmation page. All you have to do here is click on the Run the install button.

At this point, things can either go well, or not that well. In case of the latter, proceed to the next section, Installing WordPress through a hand-built configuration file. Luckily, such problems are rather rare. The best indication that the online installation is going well is the presence of the following screen:

This is the final setup page. Here, you get to set up the core details of your new site. (If you've ever installed an earlier version of WordPress, you'll notice some differences, such as the ability to choose your first username and password.) Now, fill out the installation form (you will be able to change all of these later, so don't be too worried about getting locked into your choices):

Now, click on Install WordPress. You're done with the installation.

You can click on Log In to get to the login page. Or you can always enter your WordPress Admin panel (also known as the WP Admin) by pointing your browser to http://yoursite.com/wp-admin. If you're not already logged in, this URL will redirect you to the login page.

Now, in some cases your web hosting account will prevent WordPress from creating a valid configuration file. It can be an issue caused by access rights limitations, for example. However, it's not a big obstacle because you can always create a configuration file by hand. To do this, just open the wordpress folder and find the file named wp-config-sample.php. Make a copy of this file and name it wp-config.php.

We'll modify this file together. Don't worry; you need not be a PHP programmer. Just open this file with a simple editor such as Notepad. The following is the copied text from the original wp-config.php file. Note that I've removed most of the comments, so that we can focus on the items we need to change.

<?php
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'username_here');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

define('AUTH_KEY',         'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY',  'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY',    'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_KEY',        'put your unique phrase here');
define('AUTH_SALT',        'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT',   'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_SALT',       'put your unique phrase here');

$table_prefix  = 'wp_';
?>

One thing to know about PHP is that any text that comes after a double slash (//), or between a slash-star and star-slash (/* */), is a comment. It's not actual PHP code. Its purpose is to inform you what that line or that section is about. As you can see from the previous code, there are a number of settings that you can insert here, but they do resemble the ones we were filling out in the online installer just a minute ago. Let's walk through the most important ones.

Just as with the online installer, I took my database information, but this time I put it in the wp-config.php file:

// ** MySQL settings ** //
define('DB_NAME', 'wptestblog');  
define('DB_USER', 'localdbuser');  
define('DB_PASSWORD', '62dcx%^_0hnm');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Next, for security purposes, you really should put some unique phrases into the unique keys. The secret keys are used by WordPress to add random elements to your passwords and are also used in some other situations. This will help to keep your WordPress installation uniquely protected. No one else is likely to choose the same unique keys that you chose, and therefore, breaking or hacking into your site will be more difficult. You can get some secret keys generated by going to https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/. Once I did that, I got the following, which I can paste directly over the default code in wp-config.php:

define('AUTH_KEY', 'uu|6#00Pc/3h?Pg5:Zc#:S=;<3mdw-ai');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY', 'vy1.@Nr@Zb^G|0Vfz-|TH5&W');
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY', 'sryMVd'jVpiMWWQqx~!v XE5@fJMTt2[Z');
define('NONCE_KEY', 'i,+UPpMR>Mj3o}(B**^<T:/md,YFF76d]Kf');
define('AUTH_SALT', 'n.8Li=9OjV+_p|}e5yN2k<s{!KJs|[S&Zh');
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'I#2vPT^u[5vLX|'MzPg/J*y]RTfr');
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT', 'gR%QP^c*jfFUy,iQ}-0g_%;%H)pN0B5');
define('NONCE_SALT', '&L);.IH'v{]zYLO2:h_t#J0D-p)cvyc');

Finally, we have the aforementioned table prefix. The wp-config.php file allows us to set this too. Again, here's my prefix of choice:

$table_prefix  = 'wtb_';

The WordPress codex has a long and detailed page that describes everything about editing your wp-config.php file: http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php. Once you save the wp-config.php file and either upload it to your web host or put it on your local server, you can visit your site through your domain name (like http://yoursite.com/). Youshould be presented with the final setup page, the one visible in the preceding screenshot. All you have to do now is proceed according to the instruction described earlier in this chapter.

If you'd like to see an even more detailed step-by-step guide for manual installation, take a look at this page in the WordPress Codex: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress.

Also, you can find more detailed installation instructions—as well as specifics on changing file permissions, using FTP, using languages, importing from other blogging engines, and more—in the WordPress Codex at the following link: http://codex.wordpress.org/Getting_Started_with_WordPress#Installation.