Why WordPress?

I’ve used all kinds of content management systems such as Joomla, Drupal, and Site Build It. I’ve even built sites using no CMS at all, just straight HTML and PHP.

WordPress started out as a blogging platform but has grown into so much more than that now. You can build extremely vast websites with a blog component. You can even turn it into a full ecommerce store if you want.

I can tell you that once I tried WordPress there was no going back. I just wish it was the first one I tried instead of the last. But then I guess I couldn’t give you such a definitive suggestion.

If you’re getting nervous at this point, don’t worry. It’s only going to take about 5 minutes. Seriously…

Ok, once you are inside your control panel or CPanel, scroll down to the Software/Services section. Look for the blue smiley face icon Fantastico.

This is going to create the database for you and install the WordPress software. After you click that button you’ll be taken to this page:

Click on WordPress then click New Installation.

Unless you have some reason that you don’t want WordPress installed in the root directory, like your adding a WordPress blog to an existing site, go ahead and leave the Install in directory blank.

Enter your Admin access data. This is what will be used to access the backend of your site. It’s a good idea to write this down.

Enter your Base configuration. There will be some info pre-filled in for you but you’ll want to change the email address to your current email address since it’s probably not setup yet. If you leave it the way it is, the confirmation email will just be sent off into cyberspace somewhere.

The Admin nickname is up to you. Sometimes I leave it as admin other times I use my name as I have here. You can leave the site name and description the way it is because you’ll be changing it later anyway.

Now hit the Install button!

This creates the database. Then click on Finish installation and this will actually install WordPress in the database.

The URL I highlighted here will be the URL you use to get into the backend of your site. They tell you to bookmark it, go ahead and do that. In case you forget, it’s always going to be yourdomain.com/wp-admin.

That’s it! Your small business Content Management System and website is setup. Not bad huh?!

Now if you’ve done all of that directly after setting up your hosting account, your not going to be able to see your site yet. You’re probably going to have to wait a few hours until the domain registration goes through, or what they call “when the DNS resolves.”

If you try now, you’ll get a page like this:

If you want to see if your installation was successful, you can do that by going back to the email that Hostgator sent you. Look for this line:

You can view your site using that link until it resolves. When you click on that link, you should see a page that looks something like this.

If you see a page like that, Congratulations, you just created your site!

Once your DNS resolves, you can move on to the next step – Designing your site.