One thing you’ll discover when you start exploring Blog and CMS (Content Management Systems) is that most of them claim to be extremely easy to install. The reason they make such a big deal of this is, one assumes, that all the competing Blog/CMS packages are difficult to install. Well, frankly, they can’t all be right…!

In fact, in my experience, most of them are easy to install if you know what you are doing and hard to install if you don’t. Here is a real life example of the steps I had to go through in order to install WordPress, both remotely (onto my web host) and locally (onto my hard disk). I decided to use WordPress as an example for two reasons: 1) it is one of the most popular of all Blog/CMSes and 2) it is so certain of the simplicity of getting itself up and running that it proudly boasts of its “world famous” 5 minute installation. Just in case you didn’t get the message, it goes on to say: “There have been reports of this actually taking less than five minutes, but we're not responsible for the installation being easier than it should be.”

OK, let’s put this to the test. Deep breath. here goes…

The Famous Five Minute Installation
THE OFFICIAL VERSION
This is what it says on the WordPress site...
1. Make sure your host meets the requirements. Also, have a database ready with proper username and password.
2. Unzip the package you downloaded.
3. Open up wp-config-sample.php and fill in your database details. Save and rename the file to wp-config.php.
4. Upload all the files to your webhost
5. Run the installation file. Relative to where you uploaded the files, it'll be in wp-admin/install.php.

REMOTE INSTALLATION
This is how it went in practice

1. Make sure your host meets the requirements…

Minimum requirements are PHP 4.1or greater and MySQL 3.23.23 or greater. I logged into my host’s control panel and checked. It has PHP 4.3.10 and MySQL 4.0.25. So far so good.

My host's control panel shows that it meets the requirements

Also, have a database ready with proper username and password.
The WordPress installation glosses over this step. Fortunately, I’ve had to do this kind of thing before so I realised that I now have to create a MySQL database. To do this, I find the MySQL icon in the control panel and double-click it.

This is the MySQL icon in my control panel

This takes me to a page which shows details of existing databases (if any). At the bottom of the page are fields that let me add a database and add a user. I add a database called ‘wordpress’ by entering this name into the Add DB field and clicking the button.

A message tells me that the database has been created. I click a ‘Go Back’ link to go back to the page I was working on. I see that a new database has indeed been created; it is identified by my control panel user name followed an underscore followed by the name of the database. For example, if your control panel login name is myusername and the name you chose for the database was wordpress, the complete database name will be:

                myusername_wordpress
               
                Currently this database has no users. I now create one by entering a name (once again ‘wordpress’) into the UserName field, followed by a password (which I carefully remember or have tattooed onto an intimate part of my anatomy for later reference - it happens to be the easily memorable ‘xysctatagf’). Then I click ‘Add User’.

A message tells me an account has been created and I click the link to go back to the previous page. Now I have to add the user to the database. I do this by selecting the database and user names (which, due to the way I named them earlier, happen to be identical - namely myusername_wordpress) in two drop-down lists. Then I click the ‘Add User to Db’ button:

Another ,message pops up to confirm that the selected user has been added to the selected database. I click Go Back again. Now I can see a listing showing that the wordpress database exists and has been associated with the specified user:

This is the CPanel page which displays details of the installed MySQL databases and associated users.

OK, now I think I’m ready to continue with the WordPress installation.

2. Unzip the package you downloaded.

Done this on my local hard disc.

3. Open up wp-config-sample.php and fill in your database details. Save and rename the file to wp-config.php.

The wp-config-sample.php file is found in the top-level Wordpress directory which I just unzipped. I open this in Notepad and I find four lines of MySQL settings at the top. I edit these to match the MySQL details I just set up. Both the DB and User names are wordpress. The password is the one I entered, ‘xysctatagf’, and the host name is ‘localhost’ (it’s usually localhost but, if in doubt, the Connection string shown for the database in your CPanel page should show you the actual name e.g. “DBI:mysql:myusername_wordpress:localhost” - make a note of the name in the last part of this string).

This is how I edited my database settings in the wp-config-sample.php file:

define('DB_NAME', 'myusername_wordpress');    
define('DB_USER', 'myusername_wordpress');    
define('DB_PASSWORD', ‘xysctatagf’ );
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');    

I then saved this edited file back to the Wordpress directory with the new name wp-config.php.

4. Upload all the files to your webhost

OK, you’ll need an FTP program for this. I’m assuming that you already have one of these and know how to use it. At any rate, most web design tools, such as Dreamweaver, will have one built in. Upload everything from the entire Wordpress directory and subdirectories to a location of your choosing on the remote server:

Here I am FTPing the Wordpress directory from my hard disk into a WordPress directory on my web host using AceFTP.

5. Run the installation file. Relative to where you uploaded the files, it'll be in wp-admin/install.php.

OK, so assuming my web site is called www.bitwisemag.com and I FTPed the files into a directory called /wordpress, the address I need to enter into my browser would be http://www.bitwisemag.com/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php.

Hurrah!” It works and this is the screen I see…

When prompted, I enter the username and password and pretty soon I find myself in the WordPress administration area. The famous five minute install was, to be fair, pretty simple - but it assumes (perhaps unreasonably) that you already know your way around your web host’s control panel with particular emphasis on the steps needed to create a MySQL database.

Now, let’s try a local installation…..

LOCAL INSTALLATION
These are the steps you need to follow to get WordPress installed onto a PC running Windows.

1. Download the WordPress installation package and unzip it to some directory of your choice.
2. Make sure you have previously installed the Apache Server, PHP and MySQL (see our guide to Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP).
3. Use Notepad to open the wp-config-sample.php file (in the directory to which you unzipped Wordpress). Fill in your database details. This is done by locating these MySQL entries at the top of the file…

define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');     
define('DB_USER', 'username');    
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');    

…and editing (if necessary) the second string between each set of braces.
‘wordpress’ should be changed to the name you will use for the MySQL Wordpress database
‘username’ should be changed to the user name you used when you installed MySQL
‘password’ should be changed to your MySQL password
‘localhost’ should be changed (if necessary) to the host name you used when you installed Apache

In my case, I will call the MySQL database ‘wordpress’ so I will leave the first string as it is; I will use my MySQL user name ‘admin’ and my MySQL password ‘topsecret’. My local host name is ‘localhost’ so that remains unchanged. This is the result after editing:

define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');    
define('DB_USER', 'admin');    
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'topsecret');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');    

The edited file now needs to be saved back into the same directory from which it was loaded but with the new file name ‘wp-config.php’.

4. Upload all the files to your webhost.
My ‘local host’ is the \htdocs directory beneath my installation of the Apache Server. So to ‘upload’ the files I copy the entire \wordpress directory (the one I just unzipped) and all its subdirectories beneath \htdocs
5. Run the installation file.  Relative to where you uploaded the files, it'll be in wp-admin/install.php.
As I’ve installed Apache Onto my G:\ drive, the full path to this file on my PC happens to be G:\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\wordpress\wp-admin\install.php. But since \htdocs equates to \localhost\ when I use a web browser, I can run install.php by entering this address into my browser:

http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

You must create a MySQL database with the name specified in wp-config.php. That’s done by running the MySQL Command Line client (from Windows Start menu), entering your MySQL password when prompted then, at the mysql prompt, enter the command CREATE DATABASE <dbname>; (where <dbname> is the database name). Here's an actual example:

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;

MySQL should reply something like ‘Query ok, 1 row affected’. Then you are ready to go. Just enter ‘quit’ at the prompt to shut down the MySQL command line.

This is the MySQL command line client, displaying the mysql prompt and awaiting your command

Here I've entered one command, create database wordpress; (remember the semi-colon at the end!). Then, to verify the databases available, I've entered show databases;

OK, it took me a few hours to get this far but at last I am on step 5 of famous 5-minute install…

WordPress welcomes me and I click the First Step >> link…

I enter a title for the weblog and an email address, then click the big button…

Something chugs away on the disk for a few seconds then, viola! WordPress tells me it’s all finished. It gives me my user name, a randomly generated password and a login address which I duly click…

And here I am, all ready to log in.

In truth, once I’d got everything set up, the WordPress installation was a breeze. It took considerably less than five minutes. But getting my PC set up with the Apache server and (particularly) PHP 5 and MySQL, took hours of work beforehand…

PROBLEM...!

Ugh! ....except that when I try to log in, all I see is an index of the files in the wp-admin directory…

Time to search the Web for help. Which I eventually found on the WordPress support forum. It turns out that Apache needs to be told that index.php is a valid file to use as a ‘home’ page. To do this, I had to load up the Apache httpd.conf file.

You can load the httpd.conf file from the Apache group on the Windows programs menu

In this file I searched for index.html. I found it in this line:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.html.var

I added index.php to the end of this, like so:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.html.var index.php

Then I saved the file and restarted Apache.

Restart Apache using the green arrowhead icon in the toolbar

Now, I refreshed my web browser (which is pointing to the address http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/) and to my joy, the file listing disappeared and this nice friendly-looking admin panel replaced it…

Hurrah!

Huw Collingbourne

October 2005