Web file server - 380 CHAPTER 14 INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING WORDPRESS
380 CHAPTER 14 INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING WORDPRESS Obtaining WordPress Next, you need to get a copy of WordPress. That s pretty easy. Mouse along to http:// wordpress.org/download and download the latest .zip file. The latest release is also available as a gzipped tarball. If your desktop is a UNIX or Linux machine, this may be more appropriate for you. The files inside are all the same. Obtaining Helper Programs You will need an FTP program, a program to expand zipped files, and a text editor of some kind. FTP is the term for the transfer of files from a client, in this case your PC, to a server your hosting server. Actually the acronym stands for File Transfer Protocol, but it is commonly used as a verb, too. FTP software is readily available. In fact, it is likely that your current operating system already includes an FTP program. Unfortunately, it is probably a command-linedriven one. While command-line FTP is straightforward to use, it is much easier to work with a graphical application if you can. If your desktop is Windows, I recommend Filezilla (http:// filezilla.sourceforge.net/) or SmartFTP (http://www.smartftp.com) for FTP. Plenty of other FTP programs are available.. You ll need a program to unarchive the WordPress installation files you download, because they are compressed in an archive. If you download the .zipfile, you will need a program capable of expanding, or unzipping, the archive. WinZip (http://www.winzip.com/) is probably the most popular on Windows, but has a shareware license requiring you to purchase it after a trial period. I recommend 7zip (http://www.7-zip.org/), which is completely free. For a text editor, I recommend nothing more elaborate than Notepad for now. Later, you might want to evaluate some of the specialized PHP and CSS editors. Preparing Your Server You ll need to take a few steps before you install WordPress on your server. These include gathering some information, creating a database, transferring the files, and setting file permissions. So, let s get started. Gathering Information Before doing anything else, you will need to gather some information and make a fairly simple decision. From your hosting service you will need the following information: Your login and password for FTP (you should have been given those when you signed up for your hosting) The name of your database, if one has already been created for you, and your database login details The decision you need to make is simply where to put your blog. By that, I mean that you must decide if your blog will be the only thing on your web site or whether you will want to also have other pages, such as Drupal or phpBB sections. It comes down to the URL of your blog. Will it be http://example.com/ or will it be http://example.com/blog? I almost always recommend the latter (of course, you may wish to call it journal, diary, news, or something other than blog), because it leaves your options open for future changes.
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