So, you’re all pumped up to start blogging. You know what you want to write about. You’ve got your domain name (URL). You’ve got a hosting plan. You’ve even gotten your hosting configured for the URL where you want your WordPress blog set up.

Whew! Now all you have to do is install WordPress but, whoa! You’re finding that their “Famous 5-Minute Installation” guide is, shall we say.. not-so-simple? Well, a while back, I was right there with you. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. That’s why I put this tutorial together, which will hopefully help demystify the process so you won’t have to go through what I did to finally get to your desired end - blogging right away!

Step 1: Set up the database
 Right out of the gate, this is where things can get a little funky. So let’s tackle it FIRST. We’ll be using cPanel for the example. When you login to your cPanel account, you should see something like this below.

Different versions may differ, the important thing is to navigate to the MySQL® Databases page. You should now be at a page which looks like this.


On this page you will create the MySQL database, and the user that connects to it. Please note that this is not related to the WordPress admin login, we’ll get to that in a bit. First, type in the name you want to call your database. For this example, we’ll simply call it wordpress. The next step is to create a user which will connect to the database. For purposes of the example we’ll use dbuser as the username and you can create whatever you wish for the password. Please be sure to write down or remember the password you use, because it will be needed later on. You’ll then need to add that user to the database you just created with “all privileges”.


After you click on Make Changes, notice the prefix of yourusername_ in the database name and username. This is your username for your hosting account. You will need to use the database name and username as you see it on this page, or it won’t work. Next we will actually start installing WordPress via the web-based installation script.

Step 2: Download WordPress
Head on over to the download page at WordPress.org. Make sure you download from Wordpress.org and not another third party site. This way, you can be assured you’re getting the latest stable version direct from the official site.

You can choose to download either the .zip or .tar.gz file. Both contain the same files but if you are a Windows user, you probably want to download the .zip file.

Step 3: Extract the files
Extract all the files in the latest.zip or latest.tar.gz and have them all ready to go in a directory on your local computer. I use Windows XP, and it should look something like this.

Please note some of the icons may look slightly different for you depending on the default programs you’ve chosen for the file types.

Step 4: Create a wp-config.php file
If you were to upload all your Wordpress files now, WordPress wouldn’t know how to connect to the database you’ve just created. So, before we upload everything, let’s take care of this now. You’ll need to create a wp-config.php file. To do this, go into your wordpress folder. In it, you’ll find a file named: wp-config-sample.php. Open it in Notepad and you should see this:

Enter into the listed fields, the database name, user, and password information you created when you set up the database earlier. Remember, your database name is not just “wordpress”. It would be “username_wordpress” and same, “username_dbuser” for the database user.

When complete, save the file as “whp-config.php”.

Now you’re ready to upload the files to your web host. You’ll need an FTP client to do this. I use FileZilla which is free and relatively straightforward to use. Make sure you download the Client and not the server.

Step 5: Upload files to your host
Using FileZilla, it’s easy to upload files directly from your computer to your hosting account. Open it up, type in your login details at the top and click the Quickconnect button.

So far you should have a screen like you see above. Make sure you’re uploading within the public folder, which is usually called /public_html/. If you want to install to a subdirectory, that’s fine as well.

Step 6: Install WordPress …Yeah!!
We’re just about done now. You’ve already uploaded the WordPress folders and files to your hosting account and set up the database. Now it’s time to navigate to the URL you’ve installed it on via your web browser. If everything was uploaded properly, you’ll arrive at the welcome page.

Just type in the title of your blog, your e-mail, and you’re done! Your username should be admin and your password will be automatically generated for you.

Congratulations. You did it. You’re a rock star! Woot! Woot!