WordPress Beginner: Installation and Set-Up

Name: WordPress Beginner: Installation and Set-Up
Author: Chrissy Rey

Learn how to install and configure WordPress

Preview the first lesson free — get full access to all 3 lessons.

Course: On-Demand

Hello, my name is Christie Ray, and in these lessons you will learn how to install WordPress online, how to install WordPress locally on your computer, and then how to set up WordPress after you've installed it. First, we're going to install WordPress online. This is actually really easy to do if you're using WordPress hosting. Many of the WordPress hosting providers out there have a one or two or several step process where you just click a button, answer some questions, and it'll install WordPress for you. So really easy to do, and you can see, for example right now I'm in my Kinsta dashboard. You can see I can click on create a new site and that's gonna take me through a series of questions to create the site for me. Really easy to do. And you can see Flywheel has a similar feature. I just click on the create a new site button and it's gonna ask me a bunch of questions and it'll create the site for me. So very easy to set up. If for some reason your hosting provider doesn't do that and you'll need to check with your hosting provider to see if they do it. And you'll also need to read the documentation to know what you need to answer for setup. But if they don't have that then it might be a little bit more complicated. So I set up a account on SiteGround and I purposely made it so that it doesn't have the one click installation so I don't have to go through and answer those questions with the built-in installer I'm going to install it the hard way. This is the hard way. So to do that, before you can set everything up you need to do two things. Number one, you need to create a MySQL or Maria DB database and username, which I've already done and I'm just using the built-in MySQL manager in SiteGround. Depending on your hosting provider you might need to use PHP My Admin or some other MySQL manager to do that. And the other thing that I already did was upload via FileZilla Pro, so an FTP program. I already uploaded all of the files for my WordPress installation. I got those from Wordpress.org. I downloaded the zip file that includes the latest version of WordPress, and I unzipped that and then I uploaded all of the files to the server so they're all sitting there for me. So the next thing I need to do is go to the URL for the website, which for me right now is this, it's the ChristieR.SG-host.com. So we're gonna open that up and this is gonna be what I see. So this is an uninstalled WordPress site. This is just the default settings for it. So we can see here that I can choose my language for my website and I'm gonna choose English United States. Click continue. And it does tell you that you need to have a database name, username, password and host, and a table prefix I already showed you in the previous screen that I set that up already so we're gonna click on the Let's Go button. And now I need to enter the database name. I'm gonna go back to SiteGround, and I'm gonna go to my databases and I'm gonna copy that name. It's a kind of random name there. I'm gonna paste that in here. Next thing I need to get is my username. So again, back to SiteGround. I'm gonna go to my users, copy the username, paste it in there. Next up is the password. For this example, I used a very insecure password because when I type it out, you're gonna see it. And I didn't wanna use a really nice good, secure password but when you set yours up, make sure you set a really good secure password. So there's my insecure password. Next is the database host. That's usually local host. You might need a check with your hosting provider to see if it's something else. So if local host doesn't work then you might need to try something else. The last thing is the table prefix. So when WordPress creates the tables in your database they're gonna all start with WP underscore. You can change this if you want to make it a little bit more secure but for now, I'm just gonna leave it as is. So I'll click on submit. It's gonna see if it can connect to your database. If it's successful, it'll say you've made it through and now it's time to run the installation. So we'll do that and it's gonna ask you for a few more things. So it's gonna ask for a site title. So we're gonna call this Chocolate World, a site username, make sure that you use something other than admin here. Admin is the most widely used admin username. So it's also the one that most hackers are going to try the access. So don't use admin if you can help it. So I'm gonna put my name there. It's okay that you see my password. This is just a throwaway site. I'm gonna delete it after we're done with installing it but I need that password to get into the dashboard. And then the last thing you need to do is enter an email address that actually works. If you don't have an email address that works, get one. But this email address is gonna be the admin user's email address. So it's really important that you have that. So I'm gonna enter that in here. This isn't a real email address, but I'm just gonna put it in there 'cause I have my password saved. The next thing is the search engine visibility. You can check that to discourage search engines from indexing the site while it's under development. Just make sure that when you're done with it that you find the setting to uncheck this and that way search engines will find the website. So we're gonna click on install WordPress and I've installed it, everything's good, and now we're gonna click on log in. I'm gonna enter my username and my password and then I'll log in. And here we are. This is my WordPress website. Thanks for watching. Stay tuned for the next lesson where I will show you how to do this on your computer.

Beginner Provider : Chrissy Rey 3 Lessons · 22m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

After you choose a hosting provider for your WordPress website, the next step is to install and configure WordPress. Many WordPress hosting providers will do most of the work for you; they have “one-click” WordPress installers that do just about everything behind the scenes. However, some hosting providers require you to do a bit more work. Many developers like to also install WordPress locally on their computer so they can learn and develop without their work being seen online. After you install WordPress, you might need to make some changes to the settings so it will work better for your needs.

In the Installation and Set-up module, you will learn how to install and configure WordPress. First you will learn how to install WordPress on your web hosting account even if your hosting provider does not do it for you. You will also learn how to install WordPress on your computer. Finally, you will learn how to configure several very important settings in WordPress after you install it.

What You'll Learn

Install WordPress on a web hosting account, even if your hosting provider does not do it for you
Install WordPress locally on your own computer for learning and development
Configure important WordPress settings after installation
Use one-click WordPress installers offered by many hosting providers

Key Takeaways

After choosing a hosting provider, the next step is to install and configure WordPress.
Many WordPress hosting providers offer one-click installers that handle most of the installation behind the scenes, while some require more manual work.
Many developers install WordPress locally on their computer so they can learn and develop without their work being seen online.
After installing WordPress, you may need to change several settings so it works better for your needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this course for?

It is aimed at WordPress beginners who have chosen a hosting provider and need to install and configure WordPress, including developers who want to install WordPress locally for learning and development.

What does this course cover?

The Installation and Set-up module covers how to install WordPress online on a web hosting account, how to install WordPress locally on your computer, and how to configure several important WordPress settings after installation.

What lessons are included?

The course includes three lessons: Installing WordPress Online, Installing WordPress Locally, and WordPress Settings.

What skills will I gain?

You will build skills in WordPress installation, setup, web and website deployment, and using the WordPress admin.

Do I need a hosting provider before taking this course?

The course begins after you have chosen a hosting provider for your WordPress website, and it shows how to install WordPress on a web hosting account even if your provider does not do it for you.