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1: Your Web Server and Database Setup

In this first part we will discuss what you need to do in order to get your WordPress based site up and running.

Before you do anything else, make sure that your web host (server and account you will be using for your website) has the services necessary for setting up a WordPress install. You must have the following services available and set up: PHP and Mysql. It is preferable if the version of PHP is at least 4.4.2 and the version of Mysql is at least 4.1. (while things will mostly work with versions previous to these, Ican’t guarantee that to be true in all cases, especially as things move forward if your host is using versions older than the ones listed try to ask them to upgrade to at least these versions, most of the older versions have vulnerabilities or are no longer really compatible with new programming) You must also be able to create at least one Mysql database. Not all web hosting plans allow all of this (especially the very low cost ones), so check to make sure in advance that all of this is available.

Most of the following instructions will assume that you are using a Linux server, but Windows based servers should also work fine. Once you know that your server or host has the necessary services to run your WordPress install what you need to do is create a database that will power your website. Unfortunately this is not a process that is universally done in a similar fashion across different providers. In most cases you will need to go to an area of your control panel for your site called “mysql” or “sql”. Once there you will need to do 3 things:

1) Create a database. This usually just requires you to input a name for your database. I would suggest NOT using a name even remotely connected with your actual site. Use a random combination of words and numbers, like treefrog7586 or even better u7yh776y. The reason for this is your database name information is one way hackers can get access to your site, so make it impossible to guess. (note: after you input your database name some hosting services will append your user name in front of it to make the actual database name, so if your username is blah in their system your database final name may be blah_treefrog7586 so check to see if this is true and make note that this is the actual name you need to remember)

2) You will then need to create a database user account and password. This is the “user” that will have access rights to update the database by logging into it from WordPress. Just like above for your database name, make this username and password very hard to guess (again, like the database name above, some hosts will append your username to this database username so check and remember the actual username, the password will almost never be different from what you input though)

3) Lastly, there will be a way to assign a database username to a database, you will need to assign the username you just created to the database you created in step 1. Once this is done you are done with the preliminary setup for your install.

If you can’t figure this stuff out by yourself, contact your customer service for your web host. I have to admit, some web hosts have very badly set up control panel areas that are very confusing to navigate. If all else fails contact them and have them do the above steps for you.

Now we can move on to the fun of setting up your WordPress Config file!

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9 Comments

  1. cool instruction and guide. i do hope you keep creating stuffs like this cause it really did help me a lot when i was creating my own database server in Witstech A81E.

    i also wish you can also create stuffs guide using any Android tablet OS in the future. :D

    • Nishant, There are many ways to take backup of wordpress. WP-DB-Backup allows you to backup your core WordPress database tables. There are plugins available for backup also.

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