This page explains how to install the WordPress blog software on your Web site. WordPress is one of the most popular blog programs — it's free, easy to install, and works well on our servers.
These instructions are based on WordPress 2.5 and assume you're using Windows on your own computer, although the procedures are very similar for other versions of WordPress and for Mac OS X.
Download the most recent zip version from http://wordpress.org/download/ onto your own computer, then extract the files. This creates a folder named "wordpress" on your computer.
WordPress uses a MySQL database to store the blog entries. We recommend creating a new database specifically for WordPress, rather than using an existing one. To create the database on our servers, follow our instructions explaining how to create a MySQL database.
There's no specific format you need to follow when naming the database. The rest of these instructions will assume that your database is called "wpexample" — if you use a different name, just use that name instead of "wpexample" when following the instructions below.
Now you need to tell WordPress how to connect to your database.
Look in the "wordpress" folder on your computer and open the wp-config-sample.php file using a text editor such as NotePad. A few lines down you will see the following entries:
define('DB_NAME', 'putyourdbnamehere'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'usernamehere'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'yourpasswordhere'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value
You need to edit the first three of these lines, replacing the 'wordpress', 'username' and 'password' values as follows:
define('DB_NAME', 'wpexample'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'wpexample'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', '********'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value
Note that the values of DB_NAME and DB_USER are the same (the name of the database you created on our servers). The password is the password you chose when creating the MySQL database. The DB_HOST does not need to be changed (it should be 'localhost').
Once you have done this, save the file wp-config-sample.php, then rename it to wp-config.php.
Finally, upload the entire "wordpress" (or "blog") folder — and all of the files in it — to your Web site using an FTP program.
Open the blog page in your Web browser. If you uploaded the "wordpress" folder to the top level of your Web site without changing the name, this page can be found at http://www.example.com/wordpress/ (with your domain name instead of "example.com").
A page will appear that asks you for your blog title, e-mail address, and whether you would like you blog to appear in various search engines:
Enter those values, then click Install WordPress. WordPress shows you a screen that looks like this:
Note that WordPress has generated a username and random password for you. Write these down, because you will need them to login the first time. (You can change the password and add new usernames once you're logged in.)
After you've written down the password, click the link to log in.
The installation is now complete. You can now use WordPress.
If you uploaded the "wordpress" folder to the top level of your Web site, your copy of WordPress is located at http://www.example.com/wordpress/ (with your domain name instead of "example.com"). Just go to that address to use WordPress.
If you expect to have a busy WordPress site, you should read our article about optimizing WordPress performance. It explains two simple changes to make WordPress run more than 200 times faster. (Without doing this, WordPress doesn't work well with more than a few thousand page views per day.)