Before we tell you how to install WordPress, let’s talk a little about its concept; WordPress is a content management system software that allows you to create, design and manage a blog or other type of website. It is a free, open source software that adapts to your needs and is easy to install.
Now we can start with the technical part, depending on your requirements you can install WordPress in different ways.
How to install WordPress manually?
You can install WordPress from WordPress.org. You will need hosting. If you already have one, just follow the steps below. Otherwise, you must hire one in advance.
Once you have contracted hosting, you have the necessary conditions to begin installing WordPress with the following steps.
1.- Review your domain:
Since your website will be visible to the public, you need an internet domain under which the website will be published. When you hire a hosting service, there will be a main domain associated with it. The domain can be hired together with the hosting service or with another provider. If you hire the domain with another provider, you will need to configure it in order to use it with the hosting service. The provider's support will usually tell you what you need to do.
2.- Download WordPress:
You need to download the WordPress application to your computer from https://wordpress.org/ . A compressed file will be downloaded and then placed in the appropriate folder on the hosting server.
3.- Access cPanel
You need to log in to your hosting service through cPanel. To log in to cPanel, your provider must provide you with some login details such as:
✅ cPanel access URL.
✅ Administrator user.
✅ Password.
It is important to protect this information to avoid possible hacking or problems with the security of your website.
When you log in to cPanel with your username and password, a screen similar to the following will appear. The interface may vary depending on the themes. If the screen is slightly different, there is no reason to worry since the functional elements will be the same.
4.- Upload the WordPress files to the server:
You need to click on the icon located at the top left “File Manager”. It will take you to the following screen.
It is similar to the Windows File Explorer, however, since it is a shared hosting, what you will actually see is a part of the entire server disk that is assigned to your account.
Of all the folders, the one you are interested in right now is called public_html. You may find it as “www” on some hosting providers, although you can usually see public_html. This folder is extremely important since it is associated with your main domain, meaning that the files that are here and in subsequent subfolders will be reflected under your domain.
For example, if you download the file “test-domain.html” below and place it immediately below public_html, you can access it under the following web address (replacing “yourmaindomain.com” with your domain):
http://yourmaindomain.com/test-domain.html
Doing this and placing it in public_html and accessing the URL above is an easy way to check that your domain is operational. If everything is as it should be, it will show you a message saying: Great! Your domain is working.
Now that you understand this, you need to upload the WordPress application. To do this, click on the “Upload” menu located in the bar above. Then the following screen will appear where you must click on “Select file” and locate the WordPress file on your computer.
Once you select it, you will see a blue progress bar indicating the upload status. Once the process is complete, click on the “Back to …/public_html” button centered at the bottom.
This will take you back to the contents of public_html where you will see the .zip you just uploaded:
The zipped file is not useful for the purpose, so you need to unzip it to install the WordPress files. In cPanel you can do this by selecting the .zip and clicking on the “Extract” option, as you can see in the screenshot above.
When you unzip the file, the “wordpress ” folder was created, since the .zip contained it as well. All the other files are in this folder. But this is not the ideal place to install WordPress. The correct place is directly in public_htm l, that is, we must move the files from “wordpress” to “public_html”.
It is important to check that there are no files of the type “index.html” or “index.php” in public_htm l. This would cause problems. Therefore, it is advisable to move them. If you want to keep them, you can create a “tmp” folder where you can place all the old files and also have the previous ones.
Now what you need is to move the files that are inside “wordpress” to public_html.
It is a simple process in cPanel , go to “ wordpress ” and with the “ Select all ” menu select the complete list of files, you can move these files by dragging them while holding down the left mouse button, to the public_html folder that is seen in the left sidebar.
By doing this, all the WordPress code files will be in the right place. Once you verify that the “WordPress” folder where the files were is empty, you can delete it.
It is important to remember that the information we keep in the “tmp” folder will be visible on the Internet at the URL http://yourmaindomain.com/tmp/…
If you don't want this information to be visible, you can move it somewhere else.
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5.- Create and configure the database:
Once you're done with the files, the database part begins. You need to create a database because WordPress stores content in a database, not as HTML files, which makes WordPress much more efficient.
On the main cPanel screen you need to click on the CP icon at the top left.
You need to search for the MySQL module in cPanel . To do this, simply type MySQL in the search field, as shown in the image above. Then select the “ MySQL Databases” icon.
At this point it is important to write down and save the following data, since they will be needed later in the installation process and if you do not remember them you will not be able to advance in the installation process.
✅ The name of the database.
✅ The user for the database.
✅ And the password of that user.
After filling in the information, click on the “Create database” button. If everything goes well, the database creation confirmation screen should appear:
We then proceed to create a new user for the database. To do this, click on the “Back” icon, which will take you back to the previous screen and you will have to scroll down until you reach the section that can be seen in the following screenshot.
After completing this process, a confirmation screen will appear if everything was done correctly.
Before finishing this part, it is necessary to give the user access permissions on the database that has just been created.
To do this, select the database and the user, and link them with the “ Add ” button. When you do this, cPanel will ask you what permissions you want to grant the user on the database.
WordPress requires fairly broad permissions to function properly, so you will simply grant all permissions by clicking the “ all privileges ” checkbox, and all permissions will be selected.
A confirmation screen will also appear at this point.
And with this the data configuration will be finished.
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6.- Start the automatic installation of WordPress
In principle, it is not necessary to continue working in cPanel. You must access your domain, the associated main domain.
If all the above steps were performed correctly, this screen should appear:
On this screen, click on the “Let’s go for it!” button. This will take you to a first form where you will have to retrieve the data that was previously noted and fill it in.
With this data we are “connecting” the WordPress application to the database:
Click the “Submit” button and this screen will appear indicating that everything is now ready to install the application. Click “Run the installation”:
Automated WordPress installation requires entering a series of data.
This is data from your website, not for the database.
- The admin user for your WordPress site (not to be confused with the database user above, they are different things). This is the “boss” user of your website and will be able to do everything with your website.
- The password for that user. Security is especially important here, since the username and password can be used to access your website from the Internet. WordPress provides you with a default password, in order to maintain security and avoid problems. When you enter your own, WordPress will warn you if it considers it too weak and will ask you to confirm that you really want to use a “weak” password, an insecure password.
The WordPress administrator email will communicate with you on different occasions by sending you emails.
You should click on the “ Install WordPress ” button and the automatic download will start which will take a few seconds.
After completing the installation process, you will see the following screen which will allow you to access the WordPress dashboard where you can create content and manage your website.
When you press “ Login ,” WordPress opens the dashboard login screen.
You can add this window to your bookmarks bar now or access it later at the URL http://yourmaindomain.com/wp-admin
In this part you need to enter the WordPress admin user and the password you just created. Remember, the WordPress user and password, not the database user and password: The interface may be different depending on the WordPress version you are using.
This completes the WordPress installation and you are ready to create and publish content on your website.
Install WordPress.com
Creating a website on WordPress.com is much simpler. On WordPress.com everything is already installed, it is a cloud service, the installation explained above has already been done on WordPress.com, you just need to create a user account (similar to how it is done on Gmail, for example).
It is a much simpler process, however, everything will arise from your needs and characteristics and your objectives with your website.
Unlike WordPress.org , websites created on WordPress.com , regardless of whether they work with their free or paid options, it has some limitations, however, it does not mean that it is not efficient, everything you need for your requirements and purposes for your website.
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