5 step web basics for a newbie
As I am in the middle of building the website eLitwit, I thought it will be good to share what I have gathered over the last couple of weeks. Below are some basic things about how to create a website using Wordpress for a person who is new to web designing.
Step 1: Finding a web host
If you want to have your website for e.g. My website, you will need to find a web host and buy a domain. There are millions of web hosts but the following lists should help you narrow down your choice:
These web hosts have packages of ~$5 per month and you can buy the domain for a year or three years by making a down payment. You will have to choose an available domain name for purchasing. Once you are done with that you are ready to start your website.
Step 2: Installing Wordpress in your domain
Now, I am not sure of other web hosts but Bluehost allows you to install Wordpress in the main directory of your domain or sub-directories. Wordpress is a free web publishing software or blogging software which is pretty customizable and easy to use. You can download it here or use the option provided by your host to install Wordpress.
After following all the norms of setting up admin login etc, you should be able to login using your id and password at www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin. It will take you to a dashboard which is your playground to design the website. Play around with the general settings to set the writing, reading, comments and permalinks options. It is very easy to navigate, which is one of the best features of Wordpress.
Step 3: Select a theme
I am not a big fan of the default theme (Seriously, why do they even have it?!) So if you feel like pepping up the website, below are the best places to check out themes (I am sure there are more but these are great to start off with)
Select the one you like and download the zipped file of the theme.
Step 4: Uploading
Not only for uploading themes, you will also need a medium to upload other files (pdf, word docs, plugins etc). FTP software is used to upload files to your server/domain. Below is a free FTP solution which I use. It has a very simple graphics interface and is easy to use. The are many more which you can find through Google.
Once you follow the instructions and set access to your domain, you should be able to view the folders as shown below
FTP Interface
Now you can upload your themes to /public_html/wp-content/themes or upload plugins to /public_html/wp-plugins. Try it! After uploading you should be able to see the theme on your Wordpress dashboard.
Step 5: Plugins
The above 4 are sufficient to start your website but Wordpress has some cool plugins which will power your site better. Below are the ones I find best (in no particular order):
- AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget – Allows any visitor to bookmark your site easily with many popular services
- Dandy ID services – You see on the left of my page a connect section with all those jazzy icons (Facebook, Youtube etc)? This does that.
- Feedburner Feedsmith – Integrates your Wordpress feeds to your goodle feedburner account
- Google XML sitemaps – will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO
- Header-Footer – Lets you add code to header and footer section (Use it for google analytics)
- Wordpress Automatic Upgrade – As the name suggests upgrades automatically
- WP Super Cache – A caching plugin which helps in loading your website on user desktop faster
- Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Returns a list of the related entries based on a unique algorithm using titles, post bodies, tags, and categories
- Other cool ones: Smart Youtube, Snazzy Archives, Wordpress database backup, WP Polls and WP Polls Widget
You can check out many more here.
For greater detail on Wordpress you can visit the Codex site which provides documentation on everything Wordpress is about.
Hopefully by now you must have the site running in amazing condition. I am still trying to figure out how to set up Wordpress on local computer and having some problems (with WAMP installation). But once I figure it out will post on that soon! Cheers.
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Hi Pramod,
Really nice post for newbies. Well for ftp transfer I use fireftp, a plugin for firefox. You should check it out. Regarding wamp installation, can you tell me what kind of problem you are facing? I have installed wordpress on wamp and it’s working perfectly.
Thanks! Will check out fireftp. Regarding WAMP, I am getting a permission denied error which i quite can’t understand! It says the following:
Warning: unknown: failed to open stream: permission denied in unknown on line 0
Fatal error: unknown: Failed opening required ‘C:/wamp/www/(something here which I don’t remember now)’ (include_path=’.;C:\php5\pear’) in unknown on line 0.
These were the steps I followed:
1) Installed WAMP. Went to /localhost/phpadmin() or something like that and set user name password for root(under privileges) and created the new SQL database for Wordpress.
2)In wordpress – i changed the wp-config-sample.php file as instructed in it.
3) When I transfer Wordpress files and folders to www I face a problem with the index.php as the www folder already has one. I even tried with a separate folder for Wordpress within www but it doesn’t work. Am I missing something?
Quite frustrated as I have read about 4-5 sites which lay out the steps and yet I get this error! If you can tell me in a few points the steps it would be great!!
Thanks,
Prao
Hi Pramod,
Well follow the following steps to install Wordpress 2.7.1 on Wamp 2.0g-1.
1. Install Wamp with all default settings.
2. Go to phpMyAdmin, then locate the Privileges option. Locate the root user and edit the settings and change password. Then proceed to step 3.
3. Locate the config.inc file for my phpMyAdmin, the location can vary. The file will be located in the phpmyadmin folder, so you need to find this.
For example mine is located here: C:\wamp\apps\phpmyadmin3.1.3
4. Locate this line within the config.inc file:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = ”; // MySQL password
and add in any password, example below.
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = ‘mypassword’; // MySQL password
5. Go to www directory in Wamp server installation location (e.g. C:\wamp\www in my case) and delete the index.php present there (You can backup this file if you wish).Extract the contents of Wordpress tar.gz file in this www directory.
6. Open browser and go to http://localhost. Follow instructions to create a wp-config.php file.
7. After completion of previous step, you will be given a random Wordpress admin password. Note it.
8. Open browser and again go to http://localhost. You can see that Wordpress has been installed successfully.
Note that I have not edited wp-config-samples.php to create wp-config.php. I am able to run wordpress on my local machine successfully by following steps. I think you have updated the phpmy admin config file with MySQL password (Steps 3 to 6) but you haven’t changed the MySQL password i.e. Step 2. Follow above steps. I’m sure you would be able to install Wordpress successfully on your local machine.
Well I forgot to tell that you have to create a MySQL database after step 4.
For this website the web host automatically creates the SQL database so that is not the issue. I was referring to having a duplicate copy of the website on my laptop.
Yes…I told you the steps for installing the Wordpress on local machine using Wamp. Please read my second comment which is awaiting moderation :)
Found that now :) will try it today. Thanks :)
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