Install WordPress with a few clicks! It’s easy and quick to install WordPress with CPanel. Most hosting companies have CPanel these days. The apps used to install WordPress are called – Softaculous or Fantastico.
CPanel is fast becoming the new trend because it has a user-friendly panel for you to manage your website; including setting up an email address, backing up your website, adding parked domains and more!
What you need to do to install WordPress
Buy your domain name
You need to buy a domain name first. You may already have this. A domain name is a name you want your website to be called.
For e.g. mywebsite.com.au
Where you buy a domain from doesn’t have any impact your how your website performs BUT it is better if you can buy it from the same company as your hosting. This avoids the need to point your domain to the hosting, which can be quite tricky if you are not a technical person.
Click here to read out tutorials on how to point your domain name to your hosting.
Buy hosting before you Install WordPress
Before you can install WordPress, you need to buy web hosting. Hosting is where your website files are stored. You need to pay someone to host these files for you.
Click here to see my recommendations for WordPress Hosting. Make sure the hosting you want to buy supports – one click WordPress installation.
After you purchase your hosting you will receive an email from the hosting company with all the details you need to install WordPress.
If you bought your domain from a different company, you will have to point the domain FIRST before you can install WordPress. See our tutorial as discussed above.
Login to your Hosting panel
You need to login to your hosting cPanel or hosting manager. The details to log in will be in the welcome email from your hosting.
Watch the video below to install WordPress once you are logged in. See below for more detailed instructions.
Watch our video on How to Install WordPress
How to Install WordPress
- Once you are logged into your hosting cPanel or hosting manager
- Scroll down to the Softaculous or Fantastico logo
- In cPanel this is located under Software/Services
- Click on the icon
- It will take you to another window
- See the image below
- You should see a WordPress icon
- Scroll over the WordPress icon
- Click Install
- It will go to another window
- See the image below
Which Protocol should I Install WordPress?
- Go to – Choose Protocol
- Usually the non www is what people choose these days as its less typing in the browser
- Make sure whatever protocol you choose it matches any marketing material you have set up already for e.g. your business cards
Domain
- Go to – Choose Domain
- You may have more than one domain already bought, so choose the domain you need
- If you only have 1 domain then just leave it as is
Directory
- If you are setting up a website from scratch you DO NOT need to add a directory name
- Only add a Directory name if you want to set up a TEST website first, then you would move this later (we can help you do this)
- So leave this BLANK if you are installing a website from scratch
Database Settings
- If you have access to the Database Settings, then change this wp to something new – like Gi
- Don’t add any special characters
- Just 2 letters
- This will add a little bit more security to your database
- Leave it as it is – if you don’t feel confident touching this
- We will add more WordPress security in the video lessons
Site Settings
- Leave this as the default for now
- We can change this once we get into the WordPress admin
Admin Account
- Username – You should add a strong username
- NEVER use admin or administrator as the username
- Make sure the name you choose – is not obvious and a hacker could not guess this word from your website
- Password – You MUST use a strong password
- There are so many hackers out there preying on websites these days, so I stress to use a STRONG password
- NEVER use a password like your name, your kids name, your dogs name etc…
- Make it at least 15 characters long including numbers, letters an special characters
- Save it in a text editor like Notepad on your computer so you don’t need to remember it
- Once you have set up your login details save these in a safe place on your computer
- This is how you will get into the back-end of WordPress
- Scroll to the Email installation details to :
- Add your email and you will be sent those login details
Install WordPress
- Finally, click on Install
- This will install WordPress on your domain
- It should only take a few seconds
How to login to WordPress
- Once WordPress is installed
- You will see this window – see image below
- Click on the first link to view your website
- Which is just your domain name
For e.g. yourdomain.com.au
- Click on the Administrative URL to go to your admin
- NOTE – the admin is always wp-admin after your domain name
For e.g. yourdomain.com.au/wp-admin
- Then use your login details to log into WordPress
- You have installed WordPress and now ready to start building your website
Written by Jodi Allbon September 2015
