Do you want to build a website? Do you have knowledge about HTML, CSS, JS, AJAX, jQuery? Don’t worry about it, now you can build websites using WordPress with basic knowledge of HTML & CSS. Let’s see what WordPress is and how to use WordPress to build a website. WordPress is an open-source Content Management System(CMS) to build the dynamic website and blogging systems.
CMS: It is software that includes data like text, photos, videos, music, documents that want to keep on your website. It allows publishing, editing, modifying the content of your websites. WordPress is often used to build web blogging systems. However, WordPress can be used to build any type of website. Now we will see how WordPress installs in your machine. Installing WordPress is not a complicated process. First, let’s see what are the system requirements for WordPress.
| Database | MySQL 5.0 + |
| Web Server |
|
| Operating System | Cross-platform |
| Browser Support | IE (Internet Explorer 8+), Firefox, Google chrome, Safari, Opera |
| PHP Compatibility | PHP 5.2+ |
Before installing WordPress, your local machine must meet the above requirements. In this tutorial, we will use XAMP as the web server and MySQL 5.0 database. My PHP version of the local machine is 7.3.
Below is the step-by-step procedure for installing WordPress.
Step 1: Download WordPress.
On the internet, you can see there are two WordPress Webpages namely https://wordpress.org/ and https://wordpress.com. Of these sites, you can download WordPress for free from https://wordpress.org/download/. The following snippet show, the WP download place. By clicking ‘Download WordPress‘ button you can download the latest version of WordPress.
Step 01 : Download
Step 2: Upload the WordPress folder to Your web server.
After downloading the WordPress Zip file, you should extract it. Then you should copy the folder and upload it to your web server/localhost (paste it to your root folder). If your web server is Xampp, then paste your folder in htdocs folder(C:\xampp\htdocs). If your web server is Wamp, then paste your folder in the folder(C:\wamp\www).
Step 02: Directory for the webserver
Step 02: Webserver folder
Step 3: Create MySQL database.
WordPress requires MySQL database. So, you need to create a database with the username and password on your server (my database username is’ root’ and the password is “ ”). This database may be empty. The database creation window is shown below.
Enter a name for the database, then click the Create button. Now the database has been created. Now you can make tables if you want.
Step 4: Navigate to the WordPress folder on your web browser
Let’s open your web browser and navigate to the WordPress folder(My folder name is FirstWP) in your web server like the following. In my case, the path is localhost/FirstWP(your WordPress folder name).
Step 04: Navigate to the web server folder on your browser
Step 5: Select Language
Then you can see a window like the following. Now you need to select the language for your website. I choose English. There are many languages like English, Sinhala, Deutsch, and you can choose the language of your choice.
Step 05 : select Language
After selecting language, you can click ‘Continue’ button for continuing the installation process.
Step 6: In this step, you can see the following screen. It shows you the database information you already need to know for WordPress installation. There is nothing to change on this page. So you can click the ‘Let’s go!’ Button.
Step 7: Entering Database information.
Then you can go next stage. In here you should enter your database details for the following fields.
| Database Name | Enter your MySql database name you have already created in previous step. |
| UserName | Enter a username of your database |
| Password | Enter a password of your database |
| Database Host | Enter host name. Default host name is localhost |
| Table Prefix | It is used to add prefixes to database tables that help to execute several sites in the same database.It takes the default value wp_ |
On the following screen, I have entered information about my database. After entering your database information, you can click the ‘Submit ‘ button located at the bottom of the screen.
Step 8: Before displaying the following screen, WordPress check and confirm your database information which you have entered and display following confirmation snapshot. Then you can click ‘Run the installation’ button to go to the next stage of the installation process.
Step 08 : Run as installation
Step 9: Now you can see the welcome page below. In this step, you will need to enter the administrative information for your website. Such as username, password, etc. . Don’t confuse this username, password with the previous one. Previous step we have entered the username & password of the MySQL Database. Here we create a username and password for logging to WordPress for creating and modifying the website. In set title field you can give a name for your website which you go to create with WordPress. In the email field, you can give your email address. When you forget your password, it helps to create a new password for your website. After giving all information, you can click ‘install WordPress’ button to install WordPress. After the installation process is successful, you will get a screen showing that it is successful, as shown in the screenshot below.
Step 10 : Success Page
Now you can click ‘Log In’ button to log for creating your website using WordPress.
Step 10: Logging your website logging window displays like following. This is the final stage of this installation process.
Step 11 : Logging Page
Step 11: So now you can see WordPress Dashboard like following after clicking ‘Log In‘ button. Now you can create your own website. After this, I will write how to create your website using WordPress in the next blog.
WordPress Dashboard
