I think we have learned few things regarding wordpress so far, didn't we. I begun by showing you few things to consider when you are picking a domain. We have also learned where to register that domain name and you know it is GoDaddy.com. Then after that, in the next post I talked about several things to know before deciding where to host your wordpress blog. At the end I concluded by giving the three hosting companies where I think you should host your WP Blog. For those that want to know my blog and others blogs I have are hosted on HostMonster and I am happy with their service so far. Anyway, let's go back to the today's topic, which is "How to Install WordPress 2.5 step-by-step". The steps are the same steps I went through to install wordpress 2.5 on this blog and the other two blogs that I have. There are two ways to install wordpress. The automated way and the manual one. The automated way of installing wordpress software is by using Fantastico, a service that most of the hosting companies offer and this is also the way for those that are technologically challenged and want the easy way. The manual way is a as easy as the automated one and it can be done withing 5 minutes if you know how. Nevertheless, installing wordpress is not that difficult. The difficult part and something that requires your to stick with is configuring it properly and writing posts, something that takes weeks and months because it is a continual process and it is not something that you do it one time only and that's all.

Installing WordPress 2.5 manually

The first thing is that you need is an FTP client and the one I use is FileZilla . If you don't have any FTP client then go get FileZilla you don't need any other fancy and costly FTP client and FileZilla does it's job very well. You can also use the File Manager from within the Cpanel of your host account but it is easy using an FTP client. The second thing is that you need to decide whether you are going to install WordPress on the main directory; example "www.youblog.com" or if you want to install it on a sub-directory example www.yourblog.com/blog, then you need to create that sub-directory in your hosting account. The third thing is go to WordPress.org and install the wordpress zip file and extract it somewhere on your computer. After you have downloaded and extracted the WordPress you can then copy and paste the themes and plugins, if you have any, into the appropriate sub-folders withing the wordpress folder. You can skip this step because you will go through this step many times in the future. Just download the latest WordPress software and extract it somewhere on your computer.

Create a MySQL Database

Go to your host account Cpanel and create a MySQL database and assign a user to that database or create a new user and assign that user to MySQL database you created. Copy the name of that database and paste on a new notepad page. Do the same with the user you created and assigned to that database. Copy the user name and the password in that same Notepad page. You will need them to configure a file wp-config.php withing WordPress folder.

Rename the WP-config-sample.php

Go back to the wordpress folder and open it. Find the WP-config-sample.php file and rename it to "wp-config" or simply delete "-sample" and hit enter.

Configuring wp-config.php after renaming it

Now, after renaming the wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php you now need to edit it with the information you stored in that Notepad file or wrote in a piece of paper. Go back to WordPress folder and right-click on the file you just renamed "wp-config". If you have Windows Vista like I do you wold have the option "edit" on the drop-down menu and if you don't then click "open with" on the drop-down menu and then chose NotePad.

Replace the above red underlined information with the information of MySQL database you created and hopefully you stored somewhere in another NotePad page or in a piece of paper. After doing that just close the NotePad editor and when asked to save click "save".

Uploading WordPress to your hosting account

We have come so far and now we need to upload WordPress folder to our site. If you were not able to configure FileZilla to use it to upload WordPress then you need to do so. Go to your cPanel and click on FTP accounts to find the way to configure your FTP client, in this case FileZilla.

Take the above information of your FTP account to configure your FTP client to connect to your site and do the uploading of not only WordPress that we are going to do it now but other files whenever you need to in the future. Ok, let's upload WordPress to your site. Open FileZilla and connect to your site and on the left pane find the WordPress folder wherever you extracted it and just drag it to your site on the right pane. Look the example on the image:

On the above example I just clicked on the wordpress folder on the right pane and dragged it to the root folder of KosovoBlogger. Now wait until all the files have been uploaded, have a cup of coffee because this might take several minutes to upload depending on your internet speed. If you don't want WordPress installed on your website root directory then just create a sub-directory. How you do that is this way. In my case I right clicked on KosovoBlogger and chose "crate directory" on the drop down menu.

Name that directory to "blog" www.yourname.com/blog and then upload the WordPress folder into that directory you just created. Note: Uploading WordPress to your site using an FTP client takes a lot more time than if you were to use the File Manager from within the cPanel on your hosting account. Now we are almost finished just few steps more and we are done. It depends whether you have installed wordpress to the root directory or the sub-directory that you have created. So, if you have installed wordpress in the root directory then open your favorite web browser, I use Firefox, and visit http://yoursite.com/wp-admin and if your have installed wordpress in the sub-directory you named for example 'blog' then visit: http://yoursite.com/blog, and you will be taken to the screen shown below to provide your blog title and your email address where WordPress will send you the admin password to log in into your blog.

So, enter the blog title and your email address but make sure you enter the correct email address if you don't want your password be sent to someone else's email account. If you want your blog to appear in search engines then check the box and then click Install WordPress. That's it, and you are done and you will be taken to the following screen:

Now, your wordpress 2.5 is installed. All you need to do is highlight the password and copy it and then click on Log In button below.

Enter the required log in information Username: "admin"; Password: "the one you were given from the previous screen" and that's it. You have installed WordPress 2.5 and now when you first log in you will end at the WordPress 2.5 dashboard. Now all you need to do is to update your password that you were given. So, click on 'admin' in the upper right corner of your WP 2.5 dashboard and after the page loads scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter the new password twice and click update profile to update the new password you've entered. This is how you install WordPress manually. If you still are confused or have any question, do not hesitate to ask by leaving a comment or sending me an email.

Now it's time to go and read the next post WordPress 2.5 List of Plugins you need to start with.

I hope that this post helped you learn how to install wordpress on your blog. Feel free to ask any question using the comments below.