No Bull Webmastering

Okay so everyone have a nice coffee break?

Ready to get on with this pain in the ass blogging stuff?

I shall assume that you have downloaded the core files for Wordpress. As of the date of writing this, that should be version 2.7.1. If you haven’t downloaded and unzipped them, yet, well you should so you can follow along.

By the Way, I am also assuming that you have set up your database already, have a domain name, and got yourself a REAL HOST. If not, well, come on, get cracking as we are wasting daylight.

If you haven’t downloaded the files, you can do so from HERE.

If I were you, I would have a space on my main hard drive root directory, called the ‘domain name‘ of your site. In other words, if you had a domain called MySite, then set up a directory on your C Drive, called MySite. Unzip the wordpress files to it.

When you ‘unzip‘ the file, it will create the directories, under the folder ‘wordpress‘.

Now comes your first decision.

Do I load wordpress in its own sub directory on my server, or do I put it in the root of the domain?

When you open your file manager program, ‘windows explorer’ the C Drive is the root directory. Every other folder listed is a ’sub directory’. The files you unzipped, are in a folder called ‘Wordpress‘ which should be showing as a sub folder to your domain name folder on the hard drive. So it will look like this:

C DRIVE > MYSITE > WORDPRESS >

Personally, if all you are going to have on this domain, is the blog, then putting it in the root is a good idea. If you are going to have other files, pages, there, then choose a sub folder to create, and use that to install your blogging software.

The folder ‘MYSITE‘ should mirror your server files, as much as possible. It gives you a good fall back, if things go wrong. Now it doesn’t replace the need for a proper BACKUP.

Okay, so we have the files unzipped, and it is time to get the nitty details all done, so your server can operate Wordpress. That means you have to tell the server what to do, which is from the convenient file that came with your program, the WP-CONFIG file.

HOWEVER IT DOESN’T EXIST YET, because you have to create it. So fire up your word/text editor and please, DON’T USE MS WORD, use either NOTEPAD or WORDPAD. Look in the main folder, ‘wordpress’ for the file called “WP-CONFIG-SAMPLE.PHP“. Open it, then save it as “WP-CONFIG.PHP“. [use the same case as the file is, originally, which is lowercase.]

Scroll down in the file, till you come to this lovely area of Geek Talk.

I know, it looks like Greek, but it isn’t that hard to figure out.

in the lines that begin with ‘define’ is where you need to enter the information required, to set up the database tables, and get things going. The real key here, is to NOT OVERWRITE THE “ ‘ “ marks that are shown. Look closely at the ‘putyourdbnamehere’ and other sections. See those apostrophes? Those are CRITICAL and always, insure you put information between them, without overwriting or deleting them.

I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it is, to have that simple of an error and the damage it causes. Damage as in the damn stuff won’t load, or work, and you wind up tearing your hair out, looking for what went wrong. You triple check the names, the password, and it all comes down to the fact you deleted one of those stupid marks.

It is a simple past job to enter the right info. You shouldn’t need to change ‘localhost’ or the charset or collate portions. Just insure you used the right database name, and password, or well, it just won’t work.

Next is the Security Keys. These help protect your blog and database from hackers, so don’t ignore them. PLUS, Wordpress does give you a link that will generate random characters that you simply cut and paste, so why not take advantage of it?

Just go to the URL listed in your config sample file, and copy each random generated code and then paste it into the config.php file. Of course, you could simply input your own, but you know, they really do it faster.

Now basically the last thing to do is set the prefix for you wordpress tables, in your database. There actually is a line for this, and the default is WP_ . HOWEVER, that is what a hacker will look for, so make up your own. No weird characters, but if they get a list of tables, they aren’t going to easily find out which is your blog ones, if you change the prefix.

Now, that is basically it, and you are ready to go, right?

to be continued…

Mar 05th by Malcontent