Free Technology Tutorials

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It may be edited a little from its original form, but probably not a lot. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
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Best Practices For Posting

Practice Accessibility
To be compliant with web standards for accessibility, be sure to include ALT and TITLE descriptions on links and images.

Use Paragraphs
No one likes to read writing that never pauses for a line break. To break your writing up into paragraphs, use double spaces between your paragraphs. WordPress will automatically detect these and insert HTML paragraph tags into your writing.

Using Headings
If you are writing long posts, break up the sections by using headings, small titles to highlight a change of subject. In HTML, headings are set by the use of h1, h2, h3, h4, and so on. By default, most WordPress Themes use the first, second, and sometimes third heading levels within the site.

Use HTML
You don’t have to use HTML when writing your posts. WordPress will automatically add it to your site, but if you do want control over different elements like boxes, headings, and other additional containers or elements, use HTML.

Spell Check and Proofread
There are spell check Plugins available, but even those can’t check for everything. Some serious writers will write their posts in a text editor with spell check, check all the spelling and proof it thoroughly before copying and pasting into WordPress.

Think before you post
Ranting on blogs is commonplace today, but take a moment and think about what you are writing. Remember, once it is out there, it can be seen by many and crawled by search engines; and taking things back is harder once it is public. Take a moment to read what you’ve written before hitting the Publish button. When you are ready, share it with the world.

Write about what you like
You’ve heard this a thousand times before and it sounds too cliched, but it is true. If you force yourself to write something that you don’t really enjoy, it will show. Perhaps you might not have a specific theme for writing when you just start, but that’s ok. You’ll become more focused later. Just enjoy the experience and write what you like.

Write frequently
Write as frequently as you can, may be even more than twice a day, but don’t let quantity get in the way of quality. Your viewers come for content, don’t give them useless stuff…like these tips from the WP Codex

Don’t use too much slang
Not all the readers will be from your part of the world so make sure people can understand easily.

Don’t hide your emotions
Tempting as it might be, don’t hide your real emotions. After all that is what a blog is about. If you want, you can stay anonymous and voice your feelings on whatever you are passionate about. You might have strong views on various subjects but let your readers know your passion. What is passion worth if you can’t even share it? You’ll actually love the discussions it can lead to. The discussions will broaden your own thinking and you might end up making some really good friends.

Consider your readers
Perhaps this sounds weird, but consider who needs to know about your blog before you tell them about your new blogging hobby. Will you be able to write freely if you tell them? How much should you let your readers know about you? Is it ok if your boss or girlfriend reads your posts? If you don’t want them to read, take anonymity measures accordingly.

Make use of comments
Comments let people share their ideas. Sometimes, they might not be good, but you can ask such people to shut up. Most of the times, they will and if they don’t you can delete their comments. Blogging like real life, can be both fun and not so fun at times. Be prepared. Also, give your people a place to contact you in private if they want to write to you.

Worry about blog design later
Blog design matters, but only to an extent. Don’t give up on blogging just because the design isn’t coming up as you’ll like it it to be. Sooner or later, you’ll get around the design problems with ease. But continue writing. Content is what attracts your readers, not just the look of your blog.

Don’t play too safe
Talk about the real you. Readers aren’t impressed by how big your house is, which cool club you belong to, or what the weather is in your hometown. Don’t be a bore and put a long post on how you fixed the leaking tap in minutes. Readers don’t care about braggers, they care about the real you–how you feel, what gets you excited, why you are the person you are. But if achievements are all that you can talk about, you will bore your readers.

Use pictures and videos
They make the pages colorful and viewers get to see a little of your part of the world. They feel connected.

Keep writing
Don’t stop blogging. If you don’t have anything to write about, chances are, you are still holding back. Let loose. Perhaps surf more blogs and maybe you’ll get an idea. You can write about your friends, complain about your boss, or simply rant about what’s gone wrong. Yet if nothing else works, just write a review on the latest movie, book, or product. Easy actually.

Save your posts
Save your posts before you press the publish button. Anything can happen with your computer or with an internet connection. You don’t need to lose your post.

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It may be edited a little from its original form, but probably not a lot. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
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WordPress Security Keys

In WordPress 2.8 there are four  (4) security keys , AUTH_KEY, SECURE_AUTH_KEY, LOGGED_IN_KEY, and NONCE_KEY that you can optionally add to your wp-config.php file to ensure better encryption of information stored in the user’s cookies. You can use the online generator to automatically generate random keys for your WordPress install…see the default wp-config-sample.php file for the url to the online generator.

An example of keys from the online generator:

These keys are optional, but including them will enhance the security of your WordPress site. In simple terms, a secret key is a password with elements that make it harder to generate enough options to break through your security barriers, so since they are free, easy to generate, you only have to add them one time, and you never have to remember them, no site should be without them. Do you have these in your wp-config.php file?

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It may be edited a little from its original form, but probably not a lot. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
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Content visibility is about controlling who can see your blog content. WordPress allows you to control the visibility of your posts and Pages on an individual basis. By default, all posts and Pages are visible.

There are several ways to set the visible for your blog content. You can set it on a per post/Page basis for public, private, or Password Protected, or make the entire blog private and Password Protected through the use of WordPress Plugins.

Setting Page and Post Visibility

Visibility for posts and Pages is set from the Edit panel. The option is available under the “Publish” option normally found at the top-right of the Edit panel. The screenshot below shows the interface, with the relevant section highlighted in the red rectangle.

The default state for post and Page visibility is Public. Public visibility means that the content will be visible to the outside world as soon as it is published.

By clicking on the edit link next to Visibility: Public in the Publish options, you can choose from an expanded selection of visibility options.

The options are:

* Public: The default, viewable to all.
* Password Protected: Clicking this radio button followed by “OK” causes a further text box to appear, into which you can enter a password.
* Private: This option hides the content from the public completely.

Password Protected Content

Password Protected content is not immediately visible to the outside world. Instead, visitors will see a prompt similar to this:

The title for your protected entry is shown, along with a password prompt. A visitor to your site must enter the password in the box in order to see the content of the post or Page.

Private Content

Private content is published only for your eyes, or the eyes of only those with authorization permission levels to see private content. Normal users and visitors will not be aware of private content. It will not appear in the article lists. If a visitor were to guess the URL for your private post, they would still not be able to see your content. You will only see the private content when you are logged into your WordPress blog.

Once you change the visibility to private, the post or page status changes to “Privately Published” as shown. Private posts are automatically published but not visible to anyone but those with the appropriate permission levels.

WARNING: If your site has multiple editors or administrators, they will be able to see your protected and private posts in the Edit panel. They do not need the password to be able to see your protected posts. They can see the private posts in the Edit posts/Pages list, and are able to modify them, or even make them public. Consider these consequences before making such posts in such a multiple-user environment.

Hiding The Entire WordPress Blog
Currently the functionality to hide your entire blog from public view, or to restrict it to certain users, is not part of the core WordPress product. There are possible plans to introduce this functionality into a later version.

There are various WordPress Plugins to restrict the visibility such as Page Restrict.

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It may be edited a little from its original form, but probably not a lot. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
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WordPress Pages

In WordPress, you can write either posts or pages. When you’re writing a regular blog entry, you write a post. Posts automatically appear in reverse chronological order on your blog’s home page. Pages, on the other hand, are for content such as “About Me,” “Contact Me,” etc. Pages live outside of the normal blog chronology, and are often used to present information about yourself or your site that is somehow timeless — information that is always applicable. You can use Pages to organize and manage any amount of content. Other examples of common pages include Copyright, Legal Information, Reprint Permissions, Company Information, and Accessibility Statement.

In general, Pages are very similar to Posts in that they both have Titles and Content and can use your site’s Presentation Templates to maintain a consistent look throughout your site. Pages, though, have several key distinctions that make them quite different from Posts.
Pages in a Nutshell

• Pages are for content that is less time-dependent than Posts.
• Pages can be organized into pages and SubPages.
• Pages can use different Page Templates which can include Template Files, Template Tags and other PHP code.
• Pages are not Posts, nor are they excerpted from larger works of fiction. They do not cycle through your blog’s main page. (Note: You can include Posts in Pages by using the Inline Posts Plugin.)
• Pages cannot be associated with Categories and cannot be assigned Tags. The organizational structure for Pages comes only from their hierarchical interrelationships, and not from Tags or Categories.
• Pages are not files. They are stored in your database just like Posts are.

Although you can put Template Tags and PHP code into a Page Template, you cannot put these into the content of a Page and expect them to run. (Note: You can achieve this by using a PHP evaluating Plugin such as Exec-PHP or RunPHP.)
Creating Pages
To create a new Page, log in to your WordPress installation with sufficient admin privileges to create new articles. Select the Administration > Pages > Add New option to begin writing a new Page.

Organizing Your Pages
Just as you can have Subcategories within your Categories, you can also have SubPages within your Pages, creating a hierarchy of pages.
For example, suppose you are creating a WordPress site for a travel agent and would like to create an individual Page for each continent and country to which the agency can make travel arrangements. You would begin by creating a Page called “Africa” on which you could describe general information about travel to Africa. Then you would create a series of Pages which would be SubPages to “Africa” and might include “Lesotho”, “Cameroon”, “Togo”, and “Swaziland”. Another individual Page is made for “South America” and would feature SubPages of “Brazil”, “Argentina”, and “Chile”. Your site would then list:

• Africa
• Cameroon
• Lesotho
• Swaziland
• Togo
• South America
• Argentina
• Brazil
• Chile

To begin the process, go to Administration > Write > Write Page panel, in the upper right corner of the panel and click the “Page Parent” drop-down menu. The drop-down menu contains a list of all the Pages already created for your site. To turn your current Page into a SubPage, or “Child” of the “Parent” Page, select the appropriate Page from the drop-down menu. If you specify a Parent other than “Main Page (no parent)” from the list, the Page you are now editing will be made a Child of that selected Page. When your Pages are listed, the Child Page will be nested under the Parent Page. The Permalinks of your Pages will also reflect this Page hierarchy. In the above example, the Permalink for the Cameroon Page would be: http://example.com/africa/cameroon/

WordPress as a CMS
You can use WordPress for basic content management. If you do, you’ll probably create a large number of pages for your content.

Using a Page as the Front Page
You can conveniently set any Page as your Front Page. Go to Settings > Reading in the Wordpress Admin interface. Under the Front Page Category, you can choose to set any (published) Page or Posts Page as the Front Page. The default setting shows your blog with the latest blog posts.

See the following Video: http://educhalk.org/blog/create-a-static-homepage-post-page-on-your-wordpress-blog/
The Dynamic Nature of WordPress “Pages”
A web page can be static or dynamic. Static pages, such as a regular HTML page that you might create with Dreamweaver, are those which have been created once and do not have to be regenerated every time a person visits it. In contrast, dynamic pages, such as those you create with WordPress, do need to be regenerated every time they are viewed; code for what to generate has been specified by the author, but not the actual page itself. These use extensive PHP code which is evaluated each time the page is visited, and the content is thus generated on the fly, upon each new visit.
Almost everything in WordPress is generated dynamically, including Pages. Everything you and others write in WordPress (Posts, Pages, Comments, Blogrolls, Categories, etc.) is stored in your MySQL database. When your site is accessed, that database information is then used by your WordPress Templates from your current Theme to generate the web page being requested. Thus, WordPress information is dynamic, including the information contained in your Pages.

An example of a static page might be an HTML document (without any PHP code) you’ve written as an addition to your dynamically generated WordPress pages, perhaps an “About Me” page. The problem with purely static pages is that they are difficult to maintain. Changes you make to your WordPress settings, Themes and Templates will not be propagated to pages coded only in HTML. The Page feature of WordPress was developed, in part, to alleviate this problem. By using Pages, users no longer have to update their static pages every time they change the style of their site. Instead, if written properly, their dynamic Pages will update themselves along with the rest of your blog.
Despite the dynamic nature of Pages, many people refer to them as being static. In the context of web publishing, static and dynamic mean what has been described above. More generally, however, static can mean “characterized by a lack of change”. It is easy to see how this definition influenced the word’s use in describing types of web pages. It is also easy to see why people think of Pages as being static; Posts come and go, but Pages are here to stay since Pages are typically used to display information about your site which is constant (e.g., information about yourself, description of your site).  In other words, a Page contains static information but is generated dynamically. Thus, either “static” or “dynamic” may be validly used to describe the nature of the WordPress Page feature. However, in order to avoid confusion, and because Pages themselves are dynamic while it is only their contents which are in some way static, this document does not refer to Pages as being static.

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It may be edited a little from its original form, but probably not a lot. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
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Comment moderation is a feature in WordPress that allows you to prevent comments from appearing on your site without your express approval. Moderation can be very useful in addressing Comment Spam, but it has more general applications as well. If you would like to learn more about comment spam, see Fighting Comment Spam.

How Moderation Works
WordPress runs a number of tests on each new comment before posting it to your blog. If a comment fails one of these tests, it is not displayed immediately on the site but is placed in a queue for moderation, the process of manual approval or deletion by the blog’s administrator.

Controlling Moderation
You can control which comments get held for moderation on your Settings Discussion SubPanel page, which is located under Settings/Discussion. If you would like every comment to be held for moderation, check the An administrator must approve the comment option, listed under Before a comment appears.
If you would like to send suspicious comments to the moderation queue, while letting innocent comments through, you will need to specify a set of rules for determining which comments are suspicious. These rules are specified in on the Settings /Discussion > Comment Moderation.
The first option is to hold comments for moderation if they contain an unusually large number of hyperlinks. Most normal comments contain at most one or two links while spam comments often have a large number. Look at your own comments and set this to a value that makes sense for your audience. (Note: In version 1.5.2, and possibly others, if you do not put a number in the comment moderation links box, in other words, if this box is completely blank, all anonymous comments (and possibly others) are sent to the Manage Comments SubPanel for moderation, even if the Discussion Options Subpanel has no restrictions set.)
The second option is to specify a set of moderation keys which, if present in any part of the comment, will cause it to be held for moderation. These keys are specified one per line in the large text area, which is blank by default. Moderation keys can include Spam Words, swear words, IP addresses, and Regular Expressions. When you add a new moderation key, it’s a good idea to test its validity by checking previous comments. Simply use the link entitled Check past comments against moderation list, which is located underneath the text box containing moderation keys. This asks WordPress to check previous comments and tell you which ones would be flagged for moderation under your new set of keys.
The box marked Comment blacklist works in exactly the same way as the comment moderation box, except that comments that match these words will be deleted immediately and without notification. So be careful! Genuine comments could be deleted without you ever knowing they were there.

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It may be edited a little from its original form, but probably not a lot. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
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To write a post:

1. Log in to your WordPress Administration Panel.
2. Click the Posts tab.
3. Click the Add New Sub Tab
4. Start filling in the blanks.
5. As needed, select a category, add tags, and make other selections from the sections below the post. Each of these sections is explained below.
6. When you are ready, click Publish.

Title
The title of your post. You can use any words or phrases. Avoid using the same title twice as that will cause problems. You can use commas, apostrophes, quotes, hypens/dashes, and other typical symbols in the post like “My Site – Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid.” WordPress will clean it up for the link to the post, called the post-slug.

Post Editing Area
The big blank box where you enter your writing, links, links to images, and any information you want to display on your site. You can use either the Visual or the HTML view to compose your posts. For more on the HTML view, see the section below, Visual Versus HTML View.

Preview button
Allows you to see how your post will look before officially publishing it.

Publish box
Contains buttons that control the state of your post. The main states are Published, Pending Review, and Draft. A Published status means the post has been published on your blog for all to see. Pending Review means the draft is waiting for review by an editor prior to publication. Draft means the post has not been published and remains a draft for you. If you select a specific publish status and then click the update post or Publish button, that status is applied to the post. For example, to save a post in the Pending Review status, select Pending Review from the Publish Status drop-down box, and then click Save As Pending. (You can see all posts organized by status by going to Posts > Edit). To schedule a post for publication on a future time or date, click “Edit” in the Publish area next to the words “Publish immediately”. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the “Publish” button when you have completed the post for the post to be published at the desired time and date.

Publish box
Visibility – This determines how your post appears to the world. Public posts will be visible by all website visitors once published. Password Protected posts are published to all, but visitors must know the password to view the post content. Private posts are visible only to you (and to other editors or admins within your site)

Permalink
After you save your post, the Permalink below the title shows the potential URL for the post, as long as you have permalinks enabled. (To enable permalinks, go to Settings > Permalinks.) The URL is generated from your title. In previous versions of WordPress, this was referred to as the “page-slug.” The commas, quotes, apostrophes, and other non-HTML favorable characters are changed and a dash is put between each word. If your title is “My Site – Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid”, it will be cleaned up to be “my-site-heres-lookin-at-you-kid” as the title. You can manually change this, maybe shortening it to “my-site-lookin-at-you-kid”.

Save
Allows you to save your post as a draft / pending review rather than immediately publishing it. To return to your drafts later, visit Posts – Edit in the menu bar, then select your post from the list.

Publish
Publishes your post on the site. You can edit the time when the post is published by clicking the Edit link above the Publish button and specifying the time you want the post to be published. By default, at the time the post is first auto-saved, that will be the date and time of the post within the database.

Post Tags
Refers to micro-categories for your blog, similar to including index entries for a page. Posts with similar tags are linked together when a user clicks one of the tags. Tags have to be enabled with the right code in your theme for them to appear in your post. Add new tags to the post by typing the tag into the box and clicking “Add”.

Categories
The general topic the post can be classified in. Generally, bloggers have 7-10 categories for their content. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To add a new category, click the +Add New Category link in this section. You can manage your categories by going to Posts > Categories.

Excerpt
A summary or brief teaser of your posts featured on the front page of your site as well as on the category, archives, and search non-single post pages. Note that the Excerpt does not usually appear by default. It only appears in your post if you have changed the index.php template file to display the Excerpt instead of the full Content of a post. If so, WordPress will automatically use the first 55 words of your post as the Excerpt or up until the use of the More Quicktag mark. If you use an Explicit Excerpt, this will be used no matter what. For more information, see Excerpt.

Send Trackbacks
A way to notify legacy blog systems that you’ve linked to them. If you link other WordPress blogs, they’ll be notified automatically using pingbacks. No other action is necessary. For those blogs that don’t recognize pingbacks, you can send a trackback to the blog by entering the website address(es) in this box, separating each one by a space. See Trackbacks and Pingbacks for more information.

Custom Fields
Custom_Fields offer a way to add information to your site. In conjunction with extra code in your template files or plugins, Custom Fields can modify the way a post is displayed. These are primarily used by plugins, but you can manually edit that information in this section.

Discussion
Options to enable interactivity and notification of your posts. This section hosts two check boxes: Allow Comments on this post and Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this post. If Allowing Comments is unchecked, no one can post comments to this particular post. If Allowing Pings is unchecked, no one can post pingbacks or trackbacks to this particular post.

Password Protect This Post
To password protect a post, click Edit next to Visibility in the Publish area to the top right, then click Password Protected, click Ok, and enter a password. Then click OK. Note – Editor and Admin users can see password protected or private posts in the edit view without knowing the password.

Post Author
A list of all blog authors you can select from to attribute as the post author. This section only shows if you have multiple users with authoring rights in your blog. To view your list of users, see Users tab on the far right. For more information, see Users and Authors.

Click the link below to be directed to the download page for A Free WordPress 2.8 User’s Guide. This is a 96-page, illustrated WordPress Users Guide in pdf format being made available under GPL license. I will be updating this guide regularly and making more downloadable users manuals available over the next few months.

To download the Users Guide, click the link below (or the image in the sidebar) and then look for the download link below the cover page image.

http://educhalk.org/blog/?page_id=378

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It may be edited a little from its original form, but probably not a lot. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
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I see lots of Headers already sent errors. How do I fix this?

You probably introduced a syntax error in editing wp-config.php.

1. Download wp-config.php (if you don’t have shell access).
2. Open it in your favorite text editor.
3. Check that the first line contains nothing but <?php, and that there is no text before it (not even whitespace).
4. Check that the last line contains nothing but ?>, and that there is no text after it (not even whitespace).
5. If your text editor saves as Unicode, make sure it adds no byte order mark (BOM). Most Unicode-enabled text editors do not inform the user whether it adds a BOM to files; if so, try using a different text editor.
6. Save the file, upload it again if necessary, and reload the page in your browser.

My page comes out gibberish. When I look at the source I see a lot of “<?php ?>” tags.

If the <?php ?> tags are being sent to the browser, it means your PHP is not working properly. All PHP code is supposed to be executed before the server sends the resulting HTML to your web browser. (That’s why it’s called a preprocessor.) Make sure your web server meets the requirements to run WordPress, that PHP is installed and configured properly, or contact your hosting provider or system administrator for assistance.

I keep getting an Error connecting to database message but I’m sure my configuration is correct.

Try resetting your MySQL password manually. If you have access to MySQL via shell, try issuing:

SET PASSWORD FOR ‘wordpressusername’@'hostname’ = OLD_PASSWORD(‘password’);

If you are using a version of MySQL prior to 4.1, use PASSWORD instead of OLD_PASSWORD. If you do not have shell access, you should be able to simply enter the above into an SQL query in phpMyAdmin. Failing that, you may need to use your host’s control panel to reset the password for your database user.

My image/MP3 uploads aren’t working.

If you use the Rich Text Editor on a blog that’s installed in a subdirectory, and drag a newly uploaded image into the editor field, the image may vanish a couple seconds later. This is due to a problem with TinyMCE (the rich text editor) not getting enough information during the drag operation to construct the path to the image or other file correctly. The solution is to NOT drag uploaded images into the editor. Instead, click and hold on the image and select “Send to Editor.”

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It may be edited a little from its original form, but probably not a lot. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
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Stepping Into Templates
Template files are the building blocks of your WordPress site. They fit together like the pieces of a puzzle to generate the web pages on your site. Some templates (the header and footer template files for example) are used on all the web pages, while others are used only under specific conditions.
A traditional web page consists of two files:

1. The XHTML page to hold the structure and content of the page and
2. the CSS Style Sheet which holds the presentation styles of the page.

In WordPress, the (X)HTML structure and the CSS style sheet are present but the content is generated “behind the scenes” by various template files. The template files and the style sheet are stored together as a WordPress Theme. To learn more about creating Themes, read Theme Development….
Download complete article in pdf format: Stepping_Into_Templates

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It may be edited a little from its original form, but probably not a lot. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
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Step 1: Download and Extract

Download and unzip the WordPress package from http://wordpress.org/download/.

* If you will be uploading WordPress to a remote web server, download the WordPress package to your computer with your favorite web browser and unzip the package.
* If you have shell access to your web server, and are comfortable using console-based tools, you may wish to download WordPress directly to your web server using wget (or lynx or another console-based web browser) if you want to avoid FTPing:
o wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
o Then unzip the package using:
tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz

The WordPress package will extract into a folder called wordpress in the same directory that you downloaded latest.tar.gz.

Step 2: Create the Database and a User

If you are using a hosting provider, you may already have a WordPress database set up for you, or there may be an automated setup solution to do so. Check your hosting provider’s support pages or your control panel for clues about whether or not you’ll need to create one manually.

If you determine that you’ll need to create one manually, follow the instructions for accessing phpMyAdmin on various servers, or follow the instructions for Using cPanel or Using phpMyAdmin below.

If you are installing WordPress on your own web server, follow the Using phpMyAdmin or Using the MySQL Client instructions below to create your WordPress username and database.

If you have only one database and it is already in use, you can install WordPress in it – just make sure to have a distinctive prefix for your tables, to avoid over-writing any existing database table.
Using cPanel

If your hosting provider uses cPanel, you may follow these instructions to create your WordPress username and database.

1. Log in to your cPanel.
2. Click MySQL Databases.
3. If a user relating to WordPress does not already exist under the Users section, create one:
1. Chose a username for WordPress (‘wordpress’ is good) and enter it in the UserName field.
2. Choose a difficult-to-guess password (ideally containing a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols), and enter it in the Password field.
3. Write down the username and password you chose.
4. Click Add User.
4. If a database relating to WordPress does not already exist under the Databases section, create one:
1. Choose a name for your WordPress database (‘wordpress’ or ‘blog’ are good), enter it in the Db field, and click Add Db.
5. Under Databases, select your WordPress username from the User dropdown, then select your WordPress database from the Db dropdown. Make sure All is checked under Privileges, then click Add User to Db.
6. When you return to the main MySQL Account Maintenance screen, cPanel will list information about the database you just created. You should see the username you just added to the database (with ALL PRIVILEGES), as well as a few sample Connection Strings for you to use in Perl or PHP scripts to connect to the database. The PHP code will have the following format:

$dbh = mysql_connect(“hostname”, “username”, “<PASSWORD HERE>”) or die (“message”);
mysql_select_db(“databasename”);

Write down the values of hostname, username, databasename, and the password you chose. (Note that hostname will usually be localhost.)

Using phpMyAdmin

If your web server has phpMyAdmin installed, you may follow these instructions to create your WordPress username and database.

Note: These instructions are written for phpMyAdmin 2.6.0; the phpMyAdmin user interface can vary slightly between versions.

1. If a database relating to WordPress does not already exist in the Database dropdown on the left, create one:
1. Choose a name for your WordPress database (‘wordpress’ or ‘blog’ are good), enter it in the Create new database field, and click Create.
2. Click the Home icon in the upper left to return to the main page, then click Privileges. If a user relating to WordPress does not already exist in the list of users, create one:
1. Click Add a new User.
2. Chose a username for WordPress (‘wordpress’ is good) and enter it in the User name field. (Be sure Use text field: is selected from the dropdown.)
3. Choose a difficult-to-guess password (ideally containing a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols), and enter it in the Password field. (Be sure Use text field: is selected from the dropdown.) Re-enter the password in the Re-type field.
4. Write down the username and password you chose.
5. Leave all options under Global privileges at their defaults.
6. Click Go.
3. Return to the Privileges screen and click the Check privileges icon on the user you’ve just created for WordPress. In the Database-specific privileges section, select the database you’ve just created for WordPress under the Add privileges to the following database dropdown. The page will refresh with privileges for that database. Click Check All to select all privileges, and click Go.
4. On the resulting page, make note of the host name listed after Server: at the top of the page. (This will usually be localhost.)

Using the MySQL Client

You can create MySQL users and databases quickly and easily by running mysql from the shell. The syntax is shown below and the dollar sign is the command prompt:

$ mysql -u adminusername -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 5340 to server version: 3.23.54

Type ‘help;’ or ‘\h’ for help. Type ‘\c’ to clear the buffer.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE databasename;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON databasename.* TO “wordpressusername”@”hostname”
-> IDENTIFIED BY “password”;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> EXIT
Bye
$

The example shows:

* that root is also the adminusername. It is a safer practice to choose a so-called “mortal” account as your mysql admin, so that you are not entering the command “mysql” as the root user on your system. (Any time you can avoid doing work as root you decrease your chance of being exploited). The name you use depends on the name you assigned as the database administrator using mysqladmin.
* wordpress or blog are good values for databasename.
* wordpress is a good value for wordpressusername but you should realize that, since it is used here, the entire world will know it too.
* hostname will usually be localhost. If you don’t know what this value should be, check with your system administrator if you are not the admin for your Wordpress host. If you are the system admin, consider using a non-root account to administer your database.
* password should be a difficult-to-guess password, ideally containing a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. One good way of avoiding the use of a word found in a dictionary, uses the first letter of each word in a phrase that you find easy to remember.

If you need to write these values somewhere, avoid writing them in the system that contains the things protected by them. You need to remember the value used for databasename, wordpressusername, hostname, and password. Of course, since they are already in ) or will be, shortly) your wp-config.php file, there is no need to put them somewhere else, too.
Using Plesk

Step 3: Set up wp-config.php

You can either create and edit the wp-config.php file yourself, or you can skip this step and let WordPress try to do this itself when you run the installation script (step 5) (you’ll still need to tell WordPress your database information).

(For more extensive details, and step by step instructions for creating the configuration file and your secret key for password security, please see Editing wp-config.php.)

Return to where you extracted the WordPress package in Step 1, rename the file wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php, and open it in a text editor.

Enter your database information under the section labeled

// ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //

DB_NAME
The name of the database you created for WordPress in Step 2 .
DB_USER
The username you created for WordPress in Step 2.
DB_PASSWORD
The password you chose for the WordPress username in Step 2.
DB_HOST
The hostname you determined in Step 2 (usually localhost, but not always; see some possible DB_HOST values).
DB_CHARSET
The database character set, normally should not be changed (see Editing wp-config.php).
DB_COLLATE
The database collation should normally be left blank (see Editing wp-config.php).

Enter your secret key values under the section labeled

* Authentication Unique Keys.

Save the wp-config.php file.

Step 4: Upload the files

Now you will need to decide where on your web site you’d like your blog to appear:

* In the root directory of your web site. (For example, http://example.com/)
* In a subdirectory of your web site. (For example, http://example.com/blog/)

Note: The location of your root web directory in the filesystem on your web server will vary across hosting providers and operating systems. Check with your hosting provider or system administrator if you do not know where this is.
In the Root Directory

* If you need to upload your files to your web server, use your favorite FTP client to upload all the contents of the wordpress directory (but not the directory itself) into the root directory of your web site.
* If your files are already on your web server, and you are using shell access to install WordPress, move all of the contents of the wordpress directory (but not the directory itself) into the root directory of your web site.

In a Subdirectory

* If you need to upload your files to your web server, rename the wordpress directory to your desired name, then use your favorite FTP client to upload the directory to your desired location within the root directory of your web site.
* If your files are already on your web server, and you are using shell access to install WordPress, move the wordpress directory to your desired location within the root directory of your web site, and rename the directory to your desired name.

Step 5: Run the Install Script

Point your favorite web browser to start the installation script.

* If you placed the WordPress files in the root directory, you should visit: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php
* If you placed the WordPress files in a subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

Setup configuration file

If WordPress can’t find the wp-config.php file, it will tell you and offer to try to create and edit the file itself. (You can do also do this directly by loading wp-admin/setup-config.php in your web browser.) WordPress will ask you the database details and write them to a new wp-config.php file. If this works, you can go ahead with the installation; otherwise, go back and create, edit, and upload the wp-config.php file yourself (step 3).

Finishing installation

The following screenshots show how the installation progresses. Notice in the screen, Entering the details, you enter your Weblog title and your e-mail address. Also displayed is a check-box asking if you would like your blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati. Leave the box checked if you would like your blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines, and uncheck the box if you want to block search engines, but allow normal visitors. Note all this information can be changed later in your Administration Panels.