WordPress is a very popular content management system. Nearly 18.9% of the websites are built on WordPress platform worldwide. The number of sites built with WordPress is growing enormously every year. WordPress is well known for its simplicity, ease of use, community support, good room for improvement, themes and Plugins support. Anyone can create a personal, e-commerce or professional website with WordPress. It is one of the best CMS which offers a fully functional working website for less than 60 min. You don’t need to spend your precious time on coding to create a site, the WordPress will take care of everything.
The installation of the WordPress is a pretty simple process. If you are new to WordPress, you can test the WordPress locally on your PC. In this detailed tutorial, we cover the maximum hosting services installation procedure of WordPress. This guide is useful for both beginners and intermediate users.
How to Install WordPress on a PC Locally
First, we want to explain the installation of WordPress on a PC or Mac locally. For beginners, this tutorial is advisable to understand the WordPress installation, usage, and testing purpose.
WordPress installation on Windows is a pretty simple process. It takes only a few minutes time to start a locally working WordPress site.
Microsoft Web Platform Installer
Lastly, we are using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer, which is a free program offered by Microsoft to test all types of CMS, Forums, App Frameworks on a PC.
To get started, download the Microsoft Web Platform installer and install on your PC. After installation opens the program, here go to Applications section and select CMS on the left side sidebar. Here you will see the WordPress application, just click on add button and click on the install button at the bottom.
Now the program downloads necessary files such as PHP and MySQL. Now you will be asked to enter passwords for the database administrator and the WordPress database. Click “Continue,” and the Web Platform will finish the installation. That’s it, now you have a fully functional WordPress local site on your PC.
Install WordPress on a Web Server
If you are using an online (test/production) web server to install and setup WordPress, you can follow one of these methods. The steps will vary based on the available tools which will depend on the hosting provider and similar factors.
Using One-click installers
There are several one-click installers available mostly included in a managed WordPress hosting services. These installers allow you to setup WordPress within a matter of minutes.
Install WordPress using SimpleScripts
I’m starting the WordPress installation guide with SimpleScripts. It is a one-click installer for WordPress supported by many web hosting services. Web hosting services like Bluehost, HostMonster, iPage and many more using SimpleScripts to install WordPress on their servers.
To get started, login into your web host website and log in to your account. For example, if you are using Bluehost, sign in to your account and go to cPanel. Here you will see the “Software/Services” option. Clicking on this option opens a new page and here you will see the SimpleScripts dashboard with the WordPress Installation option. Clicking on this icon will install WordPress on your Bluehost server. In this procedure, you need to select the domain or sub-domain, location, blog title manually.
Install WordPress using Softaculous
Softaculous is a script supported by various web hosting services. Hosting companies like Site 5, Siteground, InMotion, and Liquidweb. In this tutorial, I’m using Siteground hosting to explain WordPress installation using Softaculous.
Log in into Siteground hosting account and go to the cPanel. Here in the WordPress tools, you’ll find WordPress Installer. Just click on it to start the WordPress installation on Siteground hosting service. Here you need to choose protocol, domain name, directory and remaining site settings before installation.
Install WordPress using Fantastico
Fantastico is a script installing service which is popular with Hostgator web hosting. If your web hosting is using Fantastico script installer for WordPress here is our guide. First login to your hosting account and go to cPanel.
Here you will see a smiley icon of Fantastico, click on it to proceed to the next step. Now, on the left side menu panel, you will see WordPress installation under Blogs section. Here it asks for you to start setup procedure using a “New Installation” or Current installation update. To install a new blog select “New Installation”, here in the next step add the blog on the main domain name, username, and password to start the installation.
Install WordPress on Godaddy
Godaddy offers dedicated WordPress Shared Hosting. In that you can directly install without any script, the setup is simple and straight forward. In the Godaddy hosting panel click on Set up a new domain or migrate existing domain.
For a new domain, select the domain name you want to install the WordPress and enter admin name and password. It is that simple, now you can log in to your brand new WordPress site.
Install WordPress using FTP
You can install WordPress manually using an FTP software. It is also a simple process to start a website using WordPress. If your host won’t support any of the above scripts you can follow FTP procedure.
To start the installation of WordPress using FTP you need to download the latest version of WordPress and FTP software on your computer. The WordPress will download as a zip file, extract the contents of the zip on the desktop. You can pick Filezilla, Cyberduck or any other FTP software to upload the WordPress files.
First, you need to login into your web hosting account server using FTP. Here you need to select the location if you want to install your main domain upload WordPress files in /public_html/ directory.
Step 1: In the FTP procedure, you need to create your MySql database and username for the installation. Next, in the hosting cPanel go to MySQL database and click on “Create Database”. After creating Database file now open your newly installed WordPress site and it will look like this below.
Step 2: Now click on the “Create a Configuration File”. It opens a page in that you need to enter a Database name, username, password, Database Host and Table Prefix. After finishing the details, it will take you to a new page where you have to “Run the Install” for the first run.
- Replace database_name_here with the database name you defined in Step 1.
- Replace username_here with the database username you defined in Step 1.
- Replace password_here with the database password you defined in Step 1.
After finishing, you will see a Welcome page of WordPree. Here you need to enter your website info like Site Title, email, username, and password. After entering all the details now click on the “Install WordPress” button. That’s it, now you have a successfully installed WordPress site created by using FTP.
How to Install WordPress Multisite Network
WordPress has a multisite functionality to maintain multiple WordPress sites from a single Dashboard. With a simple script, you can install WordPress Multisite Network install. You can enable the Multisite feature to an existing site. To enable Multisite on an existing active site, open FTP and access wp-config.php file.
Now in the wp-config.php file add the below line just before the words /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */.
/* Multisite */
define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true );
Now save and upload the wp-config.php file. From the WordPress dashboard, you will see Multisite support at the top left corner of the Window.
I hope you will find this article useful for your first WordPress installation experience. If you have any questions or doubts regarding WordPress installation please do not hesitate to contact us. We feel happy to help you.