WordPress installation on cPanel hosting

WordPress is famous for its 5-minute installation, which really takes about 30 seconds, however getting to that final step requires some work on our part, let’s see how we can do it.

Login to your hosting service’s control panel (cpanel)

To do that you usually have to navigate to your domain slash cpanel, for example http://yourdomain.com/cpanel

Use the credentials provided by your host to login. You will see something like this

Creating a database

WordPress stores all of your data in a MySQL database. We need to create that database. To do that, click the MySQL Databases icon in the Databases box on your control panel.

In the next screen you have the ability to create a new database

1. give your database a suitable name (this will help identify it if you have multiple databases on your hosting account)
2. click the Create Database button to finish creating the database

if everything went as expected you will get a confirmation that the database was created successfully.

Now we need to create and assign a user to the database, in the same screen you will see the MySQL users section

1. assign a name for the database user and
2. click the Password Generator button, the window below will pop-up

1. click the Generate Password button a couple of times to get a random password
2. make sure you have copied this password to a safe place and check the box
3. finally click the Use Password button, the pop-up will close and the selected password will be filled in the new user form

click the Create a User button and the user will be created.

Click Go Back and lets proceed to the final step, assigning the user to the database.

In the Add a User to a Database section select the created user and database from the respective drop-down menus and click Add

in the next screen, you will be presented with the privilege manager

1. check the All privileges box and
2. click Make Changes

once you are notified about the successful application of the user privileges, click the Go Back button.

we are done, click the Home button on the top of the page to go back to the cPanel’s home.

Uploading WordPress to your server

Once we are done with the database, we need to upload WordPress. Start by navigating to wordpress.org and click the download button to get the latest version in a zip file.

back to your cPanel’s home page, click the File Manager icon from the Files box.

from the following pop-up

1. select Document Root for: and your domain from the drop down
2. and click Go

you will be forwarded to cPanel’s file manager, from there click the Upload icon

in the following screen click the Choose File button and locate the downloaded WordPress zip file to begin the upload

once you are notified that the upload has finished click the Go Back link

Back to the file manager’s main view, highlight the newly uploaded WordPress zip, right click and select Extract

in the pop-up window that follows click Extract File(s)

a pop-up will notify you on the extraction results, click the Close button

notice the newly created wordpress folder

double click to enter it and click the Select all button

once all the items are selected click the Move File button

in the pop-up window that will ensue remove the word wordpress (highlighted)

and click the Move File(s) button

once done you will be presented with an empty directory in the file manager, click the Up one level button to go back to the main folder.

The WordPress configuration file

We have created our database and we have uploaded WordPress to our server, now we need to connect them, to do that locate the wp-config-sample.php file in the file manager, right click and select Rename

rename to wp-config.php and click the Rename File button

now right click the wp-config.php file again and select Edit

in the Text Editor pop up

1. make sure utf-8 is selected
2. and click Edit

In the file editor window that will open locate the  MySQL settings block

replace the database_name_here, username_here & password_here placeholders with the database name, the user name and the password from the database creation process earlier

A few lines below you can modify the WordPress database prefix to something other than the default wp this is optional and done mainly for security reasons

finally, if you wish you can generate salts as an extra security measure and replace the existing placeholders, the default generator can be found here

when finished editing the wp-config.php file click the Save button on the top right of the screen

that’s it, we are done, we can now proceed to the famous 5 minute installation.

Installing WordPress

on your browser of choice navigate to http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php

if everything went as expected you will be presented with the WordPress installation screen

select your preferred language and click Continue.

WordPress will request some final information on the following screen

fill them in and click Install WordPress. In a few seconds you will be presented with the installation success screen

You are done! Use your credentials to login to the WordPress dashboard and begin creating your site!