Cajen Tutorials

Starting a Blog: Setting up your blog

Posted by User Image Cajen | Filed under blogging, tutorial series

Start.

If you haven’t, please read part 1 of this tutorial series. Alright, now with our website up and running, we can start installing our blog. First, you need a blogging software. There are a lot of options to choose from, but for this tutorial series, we are gonna use WordPress. It is a free blogging software used to publish your written works – it is written in PHP and uses mySQL as database. Our webhost both supports PHP and mySQL. Now go download WordPress, and extract the contents anywhere you prefer. Remember this directory as we will be doing a little tweaking later.

Now before we upload and install WordPress, we need to setup our mySQL databases – i.e. create a new database for our blog and a user to access that database. So login to your www.000webhost.com accounts, then go to your cPanel. Under Software/Services, click mySQL.

Enter the database name that you prefer, along with a username as well as a password. Click “Create Database”.

[UPDATE:] Travis did say in the comments section, that you dont need to setup the config files in wordpress, and you can upload the directory unmodified. Wordpress will ask all the pertinent information during installation. You can skip this is entire process and continue to the next step. Thanks Travis for the information![END]

To setup WordPress, you will be needing four(4) information: database name, username, password and the mySQL host which is encircled in the diagram above. So open the directory where you extracted WordPress. Look for the file named wp-config-sample.php, and open it using Dreamweaver or any text editor like notepad. On the first few lines you should see something like this:

Enter the details that you had setup in your mySQL database. For the DB_HOST, enter ‘mysql1.000webhost.com’. Save the file. And we are now ready to upload and install your blog.

Head to FireFox and open FireFTP. Connect to your FTP account.

If you notice, FireFTP has two(2) panes. The left pane are files from your computer, the right pane are files that are hosted on your webhost. On the right pane, double-click ‘public_html’ – this directory is your base or root directory and you can access this via your root site: www.yoursitename.site88.com. Any folder under this root directory maybe accessed by appending that folder name to your root site. For example, if you have a folder named forums, you can access that folder via www.yoursitename.site88.com/forums. You can create a folder to upload your blog or you can just use your root directory. I used the root directory for mine. Upload the whole folder to your chosen directory. This process may take a while, depending on your upload speed. I suggest that you upload the the entire folder in chunks. After uploading the whole folder, access the directory via a browser. If you uploaded wordpress to your root directory, then just enter www.yoursitename.site88.com in your address bar. You will get something like this:

Enter your blog’s title, and your email address. If you want to keep your blog unsearchable then uncheck the checkbox, otherwise, just click ‘Install Wordpress’. Officially, you have installed WordPress! It’s that easy.

Take a note of your username and password, for security purposes, we are going to have that changed. Username defaults to admin and the password is randomly generated. Copy the password, then login using the default username and password. You will be directed to your dashboard – you can go crazy and play with the settings, but security comes first above all. First off, look at the top right corner of the page. Click on admin.

Scroll at the bottom part of the page and enter your preferred password. There are a couple of settings here that you may want to play with, specifically your nickname. This will be the name that will appear as the author of your posts. Notice that you cannot change your username, we are gonna have that changed a little later. After you’re done, click ‘Update Profile.’

IMPORTANT: Please follow the next steps carefully. We are going to edit your mySQL database and change your username and this may cause problems if you don’t follow my instructions. Unlike your WordPress settings, don’t go crazy and start editing anything that catches your fancy as this may render your blog unusable. I will not be held liable for any damage that this may cause.
Now log off from WordPress and login to your cPanel. Scroll down to Software/Services and click ‘phpMyAdmin’.

On the next page, click ‘Enter myPhpAdmin.’

Don’t be too overwhelmed with the page, just look at the left sidebar, the last entry should be ‘wp_users’ – click it.

Wait for the page to load and on the right side, click on the first header, it reads ‘Browse’.

Staying on the right side of the page, you will see a checkbox towards the bottom, beside it is a pencil icon – click it. Be careful not click the ‘x’ icon otherwise you’ll be deleting it.

You will be presented with a couple of text boxes towards the right side. To change your username, you want to change the second textbox. Enter your preferred username. Do not edit any other textbox unless you know what you are doing. Click Go to effect the change.

And that’s it! You have successfully changed your username. Now on the left sidebar, click on the Home icon.

On the next page, click Log Out. And close the browser.

Visit your blog site. By the way, to access your admin dashboard, you have to append /wp-admin/ to the directory where you uploaded your WordPress. If that’s the root directory, then the link should be:
www.yoursitename.site88.com/wp-admin/. Now enter your username(the one you just changed), and password. And your in! With your newly installed blog, there are a lot of things that you can do. You can play with the settings, assign widgets, change your themes or publish your first post! In Part 3 we will discuss finishing touches. In the meantime, go crazy over your new blog! Leave a comment if you have any questions or if you want me to visit your blog. Until then!

End.

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Tags: blogging, fireftp, free blogging software, ftp account, mySQL, php

Permalink | May 9th, 2008

15 Responses to “Starting a Blog: Setting up your blog”

Travis (Who am I?) (1 comments.) Says:
May 11th, 2008 at 4:10 am
Just an FYI, you really don’t need to set up the config file. I’ve installed wordpress countless times, and it will give you the option to enter all the information into the file when you go to wp-admin/install.php
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Cajen (Who am I?) Says:
May 11th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Thank you Travis for the information. I have updated the post accordingly. This will definitely save time.
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Starting a Blog : Finishing touches Says:
May 11th, 2008 at 8:21 am
[...] RSS ← Starting a Blog: Setting up your blog [...]
CajenSoft » Blog Archive » Starting a Blog : Finishing touches Says:
May 11th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
[...] you haven’t, please read part 1 and part 2 of this tutorial series. Now that you have a working blog, you can now start publishing content. [...]
nazz (Who am I?) Says:
May 20th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I am following your method properly..but for some reason while installing wordpress it is not getting connection with my database…which I created in mysql..please help

thanks
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Cajen (Who am I?) Says:
May 29th, 2008 at 5:53 am
hi nazz, can you tell me more about the problem with mysql. what error messages are you getting? please fill me in with the details and ill try to help you out.
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CajenSoft » Blog Archive » » Adding a Google Custom Search Engine Says:
May 30th, 2008 at 7:39 am
[...] wordpress control panel. If you can’t remember how to log in to your wordpress, you might want to reread this post. Once you’re logged in, click on Write then [...]
crackzsl (Who am I?) (1 comments.) Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 8:48 am
HEY!
Thanks I’m from srilanka.
I setup my blog following your instructions.
this is my blog : http://sri.890m.com
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Tony (Who am I?) (1 comments.) Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
I did everything that you said but when I try to open my site it came out:

There doesn\’t seem to be a wp-config.php file. I need this before we can get started. Need more help? We got it. You can create a wp-config.php file through a web interface, but this doesn\’t work for all server setups. The safest way is to manually create the file.

I did change the config-sample.php and send it agin through FTP but I still got the same error
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Cajen (Who am I?) Says:
June 6th, 2008 at 7:44 am
tony, you said that you changed config-sample.php, did you rename it to wp-config.php? also make sure that its uploaded to the correct directory. sometimes, when uploading many files, your ftp might lose connection and might skip a file or two. verify that you have uploaded all the files. if you’re still having problems, just tell me. good luck on your blog!

crack, congratulations! ill try visit your blog and leave a message. if you want o do a link exchange just tell me alright?

Happy blogging everyone!
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Fernando (Who am I?) Says:
July 7th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Thanks for the tutorial, it was very useful. I just finished installing my blog.
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crackzsl (Who am I?) (1 comments.) Says:
July 10th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Thanks for the tutorial.
I have made several sites with your help
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Cajen (Who am I?) Says:
July 12th, 2008 at 7:19 am
Fernando and crackzsl
Im glad i was able to help. thanks too for dropping by!
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Ajay (Who am I?)(new comment) Says:
October 4th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Thanks for you sharing here, i will take some notes from here.. keep it up
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hornetlover (Who am I?)(new comment) Says:
January 5th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
hello, cajen. thank you for adding me in your community. i have one problem. i followed all your tuts here but i cannot see the welcome page from wordpress? i wanna host my own blog so i can monetize it more. i don’t know much in computer programming. please, help me how to fix this. thank you so much.
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