How to setup a WordPress blogGetting Started
If you are new to blogging then allow me to introduce you. A blog (a contraction of “web log”) is a place where you can share what is happening in your family. You can post news about your business for your customers. Perhaps you wish to keep an online journal of your travels.
Whatever your purpose is, a great place to start is by installing the latest version of WordPress in your WestHost account. WordPress is a blog publishing web application available with almost all of our shared hosting plans. No Web design experience is required; just an idea and the time to write about it. To get started, you will need to install WordPress in your account as follows:
Installing WordPress
- Log into Site Manager at http://www.yourdomain.com/manager/.
- On the left side of the page under “Site Applications” click on “Install & Manage”.
- Click on the installation icon for “WordPress” under the “Community” category.
- Agree to the terms and conditions, click “Next”, and fill in a few details that will be used to install WordPress into your account.
- WordPress is now installed in your account and can be found at http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress/. You can log into the WordPress control panel at http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress/wp-login.php.
And Where Do We Go From Here?
Having installed WordPress is enough to immediately get you blogging. However, there are a lot of resources available that you can use to personalize your WordPress installation.
- Themes – A theme completely changes the look of your blog. The site http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ contains hundreds of themes you can install for free.
- Plugins – Plugins extend the base functionality of WordPress. What kind of new features can plugins provide? Read this blog post on WordPress plugins from earlier this year for more information:
http://www.westhost.com/blog/2008/07/adding-plugins-to-wordpress/. - SEO – The purpose of a blog is to be read, and SEO (search engine optimization) can help make that happen. Fortunately, another blog post is available to help you get started:
http://www.westhost.com/blog/2008/08/optimizing-your-blog-for-search-engines/.
Finally, a great example of a clean, well-organized WordPress blog can be found at www.photosensibility.com. The author, Andy Gray, has been kind enough to write a detailed article on how he has successfully used WordPress to blog with his WestHost account.
2 Comments
The installation process is very methodical and easy to use. However, you do not get to choose _where_ WordPress will be installed. This is an unusual issue on a hosting platform in my experience. If you were planning to make WordPress the content management system for your whole site, you will either have to put up with URLS that all have the http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress/ look to them, or move the WordPress files to the root. Sounds easy, but then you can no longer use West Host’s site manager to update your version of WordPress, you’ll need to do it manually. Really unfortunate situation for a good hosting company.
I can see your point, having the flexibility to move/place your content as needed is important. Because we have focused on simplicity and ease of use, there are some limitations to the installation and maintenance available through the current control panel. As you may have noticed, we will be upgrading to cPanel in the near future. With this upgrade we will be adding extended functionality that will manage the installation and maintenance of the offered software regardless of where you install it within your account.