WordPress is a great platform to build your review site. It’s easy to post, allow others to post and for commenting. There are also useful review site plugins that can make your review website very functional. The best part is WordPress is free and it’s not too complicated to install.
What You Need to Get Started:
- Domain
- Web Host with MySQL database (we are using hosting equipped with cPanel in our demonstration)
- FTP program
Download the Latest WordPress Set up Files
Go to http://wordpress.org/download/ and download the latest version of WordPress to your computer.
Set up Your Database
Log into cPanel and find “MySQL Database Wizard”. This is where you will set up your database.
You can name your database whatever you’d like. We called ours “wp” as you can see below.
You also need to add a database user and assign a password as well. We called our user “wp”. Make sure to take note of these names. Click “Create User” when you’re done.
Give the database all the privileges required and click “Next Step” when you’re done.
After you click “Next Step,” you should see message that says the user was added to the database like this:
Load the Files Through FTP:
We are using CuteFTP to load our files, but most FTP programs work pretty much the same way. Open up your site and on the right side of the program, you’ll likely see something like “public_html”. Click it to get to your site’s files.
On the left side of the screen, open up the folder where you saved the WordPress files. Select them all.
Once you have selected them, you can right click and choose “Upload”. This will load all your files into the main part of your site. If you want your WordPress set up to appear in a specific folder (for example: mysite.com/blog), you will need to create that folder on your site and open it to add the files.
Complete the Install
Once the files have finished loading, point your browser to the install page. It should be at something like http://xxxx.com/wp-admin/install.php or if you installed WordPress into a folder, it would be something like http://xxxx.com/wp-admin/blog/install.php
Create Configuration File
In order to make the install work, we have to create a configuration file. As you can see from the message below, it’s possible to create the file via the web, but not all hosts can do it.
We are going to attempt to create one via the web by clicking, “Create a Configuration File”.
Next, we are asked to enter the database name, user name, password and database host (usually “localhost”). You can complete the last field if you plan to add more than one WordPress installation on your domain.
After we click “Submit”, we are notified that our host isn’t set up to create the file. However, WordPress makes it very easy for you to create the file in FTP by providing the text you need in the file. This makes it much easier than finding the information you have to add in the code. All you have to is copy and paste.
So do that. Copy and paste the code.
We’re going to go back to our FTP program now and find the file on our site that is called “wp-config-sample.php”. We are now going to right click and choose “Rename”.
Rename the file to “wp-config.php”.
Once you have renamed the file, right click again. This time choose “Edit”.
The file will open and it will look a lot like the code you just copied, but don’t worry, you can delete what’s there and paste in what WordPress told you to add. The copy and paste code includes your database name, user, etc. and is required to make the WordPress install work.
Once you’ve pasted in the right code, click “Save”.
Run the Install
Now you can go back to the installation you were working on the web. We’ve complete the config file, so we can just click “Run the install”.
We’re almost done. Now enter the required information for your site. You need to make a title for your site (choose whatever you want). You also need to assign an admin user name and password. You can add other users once WordPress is installed.
Click “Install WordPress” as shown above. Then you should see the “Success” message as shown below.
