How to Install WordPress Manually

You can easily and instantly create a WordPress blog using script auto-installer (such as softaculous or fantastico) – easy as 1-2-3 and done, but here I will explain how to install WordPress manually. Why?

First, manual installation is more difficult to do, but by doing it you will able to fully understand how WordPress works.

Second, we can add extra tweaks to improves your WordPress blog. Something that cannot be done with automatic installation.

Ok, lets start WordPress installation.

I assuming we will install it in home directory of your website (eg. www.yourdomain.com), and you able to login to your cPanel.

• Download WordPress latest version from here (WordPress zipped file).
• Open your cPanel, and navigate to “File Manager”, when you asked for working directory, select “Web Root (public_html/www)” then click “Go”
• Click “Upload” icon, and upload your WordPress file.
• Once upload process completed, navigate to File Manager, right click on zipped WordPress then click “Extract”
• New folder “wordpress” will be created, open it, then select ALL files, right-click then select “Move”, on file path type : “/public_html” (without quotes) then click “Move File(s)”.

Uploading is completed. Next step is creating database (including database name, database user, and database password).

• Open cPanel home, and navigate to “Database” section, click “MySQL Database Wizard”
• Step one, create new database, simply enter wp or wpdb (anything as you want) after your username, here we use username_wpdb.
• Step two, create database user, enter database username and password as you want. Write down database name, database username, and database password on notepad.
• Step three, add user to database, just tick on ALL PRIVILEGES then click next step, and your done.

MySQL database creation is completed. Next step is editing your wp-config.php file. wp-config.php contain main configuration options of your WordPress blog.

• Open “File Manager” through cPanel homepage, set Web Root as working directory then search for wp-config.php file. No wp-config.php file? Don’t worry, just rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php.
• Click it once, then right-click and select Edit.
• Edit DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, and DB_HOST as previous database settings.

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'username_wpdb');** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'username_dbuser');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'mypassword');
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

• Finally, click “Save Changes” to save your wp-config.php configuration.

With current configuration, WordPress should works fine. You can finish WordPress installation by opening www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php on your browser.

But before you finishing your WordPress installation, I highly recommended add this lines to your wp-config.php after database settings to tweaks your WordPress performance :

/** Enable Caching */
define('WP_CACHE', true);
/** Limiting Revisions */
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 10);
define('AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 120);
/** Define home / site URL */
define('WP_HOME', 'http://www.yourdomain.com');
define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://www.yourdomain.com');

WP_CACHE is required for some caching plugins to optimize your blog page speed/performance.

WP_POST_REVISIONS with value 10 is limiting WordPress revisions up to 10 revisions, AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL with value 120 work to auto saving revisions every 120 seconds when we write a post. This option keep our wordpress database small and less cluttered.

We define URL / home directory so WordPress does not need to access to DB server to grab these 2 values every time when header or footer call these for RSS, CSS, JavaScript location on your theme. Faster WordPress, with lower SQL query!

OK, everything is done. Fired up your browser and open www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php, follow on-screen guide and your blog will up and running.