Today if your project has no website, you lose a lot of potential customers. Ever more people tend to shop and search for information online. This opens before you a great opportunity to sell your products, or even knowledge. The ways to start working online are numerous — this can be a blog, an eCommerce project, a promo website, etc. Basically, whatever you will imagine can become an online project.
There are several easy ways to start a website. The easiest of them is to hire a pro to make it all from scratch. However, if you want to cut extra costs, you can develop the website yourself. For this you’ll need a Content Management System, or just CMS. These are special platforms that work like wizards — you choose necessary tools, and unite them into a whole system that will later become your website.
How to Install WordPress CMS?
WordPress is obviously the most popular CMS. It has a lot of features and attracts ever more users with its numerous plugins, exciting themes, and SEO-friendliness. To work with WordPress you’ll have to install special firmware on your web hosting. Don’t worry – this is not hard at all.
There are two principal ways to install WP software. The first one is to use Fantastico, a special wizard provided with cPanel. However, often it offers outdated WordPress software, so it’s better to install everything manually. Also, manual installation will give you better understanding of how your website works. Here are three key stages of manual WordPress setup:
1. Get WordPress Package
Of course, to install WP software, you need to download it first. Just go to wordpress home page, and choose the package for your operating system. Thereafter, go to your cPanel, and open its File Manager. Use it to upload and unpack the WP installation package. At this point, your CMS software is ready to install, but you still need a database for managing the website that you’re about to create.
2. Create a MySQL Database and User
First of all, go to cPanel > MySQL Databases, and create a new database. Just enter the name you like, and that’s it. Thereafter, create a new MySQL user that will administer the database. Again, you have to choose a name, and a strong password. Finally, go to cPanel > MySQL Databases once again, and authorize the newly created user to administer the database that you’ll use for WordPress.
3. Install WordPress on Your Hosting
And here we go. The final stage is not hard at all. Now you only need to type your domain in the web browser, and press Enter. If you followed all stages from above well, you’ll be suggested to create a special WordPress configuration file. During the installation, you’ll be requested key info including your user and database name — for this you’ll need the data from Step 2.
Wait a bit, and WordPress software will be installed on your web hosting. Now you can go to www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin, and access the administrator’s dashboard. Using tools available at this page you can design your website from scratch — just be creative, and think about your future clients well.
