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What if you’ve already tried the WordPress.com solution and been happy with it, but you want to expand the functions of your blog or enhance the look and feel? Or maybe you’re more of a techie geek and you want something more than WordPress.com has to offer. If so, here’s the “wait, there’s more” that you’ve been expecting.
If you want to have more control over your blog site and have the technical knowledge to install, configure, and maintain it, downloading the WordPress software from WordPress.org could be the solution for you. Setting up your blog with the WordPress software enables you to add your own plug-ins, design your own themes, and control when your software is updated. Information You Need Before You Begin After you have decided to install your own WordPress software, you need to do a few things before you begin.
How WordPress Software Works
As you can imagine, quite a bit is going on in the background of WordPress software. It’s important to know what parts are involved and how they work with each other. There are a number of parts all working together to make your blog work correctly. When you use WordPress.com, all this is taken care of for you. When you use the WordPress software you are on your own, so you need to understand the architecture of a WordPress blog.
WordPress Software
This is the software that creates and runs your blog, including the website pages, themes, and add-ons.
PHP Software and Scripts
PHP is a scripting language that helps you create a dynamic web page. This enables the WordPress software to create web pages on the fly. The PHP scripts also talk to the MySQL database to gather data and build dynamic pages.
Before Installing Your Software
Before starting your installation of WordPress software, you need to do some simple things with your hosting service, and there are some tools you’ll need.
Confirm that the Right Software Is Installed on Your Server
To run WordPress 2.6, your web hosting service must provide the following:
- PHP version 4.3 or greater
- MySQL version 4.0 or greater
- (Optional) Apache mod_rewrite module (for clean URIs known as Permalinks)
Get a Text Editor
You might have to edit some text files to get your WordPress install up and running. A text file is simply a file with words and numbers in it that doesn’t contain formatting.
Get an FTP Client
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is a fancy name for the software that allows you to easily transfer files between computers. When you are installing software such as WordPress, you need to move files between computers easily. An FTP client is a program that helps you do this.
Pick a Username and Password
A good rule of thumb is to pick a username and password before you begin. Like all usernames and passwords, they should be unique and contain letters and numbers.