02_09_2008

How to Integrate a WordPress Blog into Your existing Web Site – Part Two

Scrawled by Ian | WordPress Tips

Here’s the second part of my 5-part guide to help you through the process of integrating a WordPress blog into your existing Web site:

  1. Checking Your Web Hosts Has the WordPress Pre-Requisites Installed
  2. Installing WordPress On Your Web Server
  3. Creating Your WordPress Theme
  4. Uploading Your Theme
  5. Adding Links to Your Web site

This time I’ll talk you through installing WordPress on your Web host.

Install WordPress on Your Web Host

WordPress is famous for its 5 minute install and the installation itself is very easy to do – you simply enter the URL of your blog’s homepage. However, there are a couple of things you need to do before you can begin the install:

Create a MySQL Database and a MySQL Database User

WordPress stores all of your blog’s post and page content, along with a few other important bits of information, in a MySQL database which you have to create before installing WordPress.

In addition to needing a place to store its data, WordPress needs to know the credentials of a database user that can read and write to the database.

You should be able to create both the database and user pretty easily through your Web host’s control panel – with just a few clicks and a bit of typing – but if you have any problems with this check out your Web host’s online help for more information about creating MySQL databases and users.

Once you’ve created them note down the name of the database as well as the username and password of the database user you’ve created, you’ll need them later on.

Create a Sub-Folder For the WordPress Files on Web Server

To keep things as uncomplicated on your Web server as possible, I find it best to keep the files used by WordPress separate from the rest of the Web site’s files. The easiest way to do this is by creating a WordPress sub-folder in the Web Root folder. For exmpale:

/public_html/wordpress/

It’s important to keep in mind that the name you give the sub-folder will appear in the URL for your blog. If, as in the example above, you call the sub-folder “wordpress” the URL to your blog home page would look like this:

http://your-web-site-name.com/wordpress/

So it’s best to name the sub-folder something sensible like “our-blog” or “news”.

Download the latest version of WordPress

This one’s an easy step, download the latest version of WordPress from WordPress.org.

When it’s downloaded, unzip the file on your computer.

Edit the wp-config-sample.php File

Once you’ve downloaded the WordPress files you need to edit the wp-config-sample.php file found in the WordPress root folder you’ve just downloaded.

Firstly, you need to change the name of the file from wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php.

The wp-config.php file is used by WordPress to connect to the database you created earlier on – as well as controlling a few other WordPress features.

Open the newly named wp-config.php in your favourite text editor (mine’s Notedpad) and edit the following lines:

define(’DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere’); // The name of the database
define(’DB_USER’, ‘usernamehere’); // Your MySQL username
define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘yourpasswordhere’); // …and password

Replacing putyourdbnamehere with the database name, usernamehere with the database user’s username and yourpasswordhere with the database user’s password that you created earlier on.

Make sure that you keep the single quote mark and that the values enter exactly match those – including any capitalisation – that you created earlier on.

Finally, you need to specify 3 keys that are used to protect information stored in the cookies set by WordPress.

The keys should be reasonable complicated to increase the level of protection so it’s easiest to visit the link given in the wp-config.php file to randomly generate the keys for you. For example, these are the keys generated for me:

define(’AUTH_KEY’, ‘:dr+%/5V4sAUG-gg%aS*v;&xGhd%{YKC^Z7KKGh j>k[.Nf$y7iGKdJ3c*[Kr5Bg');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY', 'TufWOuA _.t>#+hA?^|3RfGTm>@*+S=8\"\'+\"}]<m#+}V)p:Qi?jXLq,<h\\`39m_(’);
define(’LOGGED_IN_KEY’, ‘S~AACm4h1;T^\”qW3_8Zv!Ji=y|)~5i63JI |Al[(<YS<2V^$T])=8Xh2a:b:}U_E’);

Once you’ve set these, save the changes that you’ve made.

Upload the WordPress Files to Your Server

With the wp-config.php file successfully edited it’s time to upload the WordPress files to your Web server.

You’ll need FTP access to your server for this – which again is something you should be able to grant relatively easily through your Web host’s control panel.

With FTP access granted, upload the files to the WordPress sub-folder you created on your server in the step above using your favourite FTP client (mine is SmartFTP).

Install WordPress

Finally, you’re ready to run the WordPress install!

Open your favourite browser (mine is Firefox) then enter the URL of the blog home page in the Address Bar. For example:

http://your-web-site-name.com/wordpress/

And if you’ve completed all of the previous steps successfully, you’ll see the 1st page in the WordPress Installation Wizard.

Change Your Admin User’s Password

OK, I said the step above was the final one, and WordPress should now be installed on your Web server, but there’s one last thing you should do before going onto part 3 of this guide – change the Admin WordPress user’s password.

As part of the install WordPress creates an Admin user and gives it a randomly generated password.

This password is a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters and special characters making it something you’ll probably never remember. Experience has taught me that there are few things more frustrating then trying to log into WordPress for the second time only to find you can’t remember the password!

So log in to WordPress – using the credentials displayed in the final page of the WordPress Installation Wizard -and change the Admin user’s password to something you will remember.

Installation Summary

This was quite a long post so here’s a quick summary of the main points:

  1. Create MySQL database and user - And note down the credentials
  2. Create a sub-folder for WordPress files – Remebering the folder name with form part of your blog’s URL.
  3. Dowload the latest version of WordPress.
  4. Edit the wp-config-sample.php file - Used to connect to your MySQL database and control some WordPress features.
  5. Upload WordPress to your server – You’ll need FTP access to your server.
  6. Install WordPress - It only takes 5 minutes.
  7. Change the Admin WordPress user’s password – Unless you have an amazing memory, you’ll regret it if you don’t change the password.

Next Part

In the next part I talk you through creating your custom WordPress Theme.

Get 7879 Designs To Do It For You

If you want an even easier way to integrate a WordPress blog into your existing Web site, just ask 7879 Designs to do it for you.

Not only are we pretty experienced at integrating WordPress, we really enjoy it too!

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Number of Comments: 9 Comments so far.

  1. Kim Woodbridge wrote on the 21_10_2008

    Hi Ian – Are you going to continue this series? I hope so!!

    This is a great installation guide – I’ve been thinking about writing one but may just refer people to yours :-)

  2. admin wrote on the 21_10_2008

    Thanks for that, Kim, I appreciate the positive feedback.

    I am going to keep writing it, I just need to find the time.

    Hopefully that will happen in the next couple of weeks.

  3. Kim Woodbridge wrote on the 21_10_2008

    Ahhh … time. I know … I have a 6 year old, a full time job, am freelancing and am posting 6 articles a week – something has got to give. (Hopefully the full time job :-)

  4. Ian wrote on the 21_10_2008

    I think you and I live the same life, Kim ;)

    Sadly, for me if not anyone else, it’s often the posting that takes a back seat. But it does mean I’ve got a roof over my head and spend plenty of time with the family.

    I’m getting braver and braver though and hope to make the leap to full time self employment in the near future…

    It’s a scary World out there at the minute though!

  5. (Anti) Social-Lists 10/26/08 | (Anti) Social Development wrote on the 26_10_2008

    [...] Installing WordPress on your server – Ian, from 7879 Designs, has written step-by-step instructions for a manual install of WordPress. I was thinking of writing one, and now I don’t have to. [...]

  6. naseer ahmad mughal wrote on the 30_10_2008

    very informative, Thanks for sharing and wait for third part

    “creating your custom WordPress Theme”

    regards,

  7. Brian wrote on the 09_10_2008

    Hey Ian,

    Loving the series so far. Think it’s great that you are splitting the whole process into 5 chunks, as the guides that try to fit it into one don’t seem to go into enough detail.

    Any ideas on when you’ll be continuing with part 3?

    Brian

  8. Chris wrote on the 20_10_2008

    The clearest guide I have yet found… up to part two. Did you complete it? And how do I find the final three sections?

  9. Chris wrote on the 20_10_2008

    Perhaps I am getting something wrong. Maybe you are still working on it. But the dates are appearing as the current day and month but the year is showing up as 2008 in my last post

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