Introduction

A self hosted WordPress blog is created in 2 simple steps. Installation and setup is quite easy. GoDaddy, our ISP provides a link to the wordpress.org web site to start the installation. You just fill in the blanks on a few screens and the WordPress installer takes care of the details. After the installation is complete, login to the site as the administrator and complete the setup tasks.

Let’s go through the steps.

Installation

Create the database. The installer creates a MySQL database and the database user id. You just need to supply the password.

Next choose an installation directory. You have two choices. You can make WordPress your web site or you can install it in a folder under your root. WordPress is composed of static HTML pages and the Blog which consists of posts, comments and replies. We chose to install it in a folder under the root of our domain.

In the final step, you create the administrator’s login, password and email address. 

WordPress takes about 5 minutes to install. After that you login and make some choices regarding appearance in the Setup phase.

 Set Up

When installation is complete, login to the site using a url similar to this if you installed it as a folder off of your site’s root: domain-name/blog/wp-admin. You will need to login with the credentiols you used in the Installation phase.

There are a number of settings that affect customization. Documentation is available through WordPress Help functionality on your site, search wordpress.com or take a course. I recently completed a 13 part video course on Lynda.com.

Theme

One of the first things you want to do is select a theme. Under the Appearance tab, you can browse through and preview various WordPress Themes. Click to install it. If you don’t like it, you can always change it. Warning: not all themes support all settings. You may find that you have to redo some of your customizations if you switch back.

Users

You may want to add users to the site. You add a user, by creating a logon id, password and email address. An invitation is sent to the email address provided. The email message contains a link that verifies the user and the identity is added to the site. A role is assigned to a user: contributor, author, editor and administrator. Be careful granting user’s the administrator role. The original site administrator can’t easily be deleted. Operative, word “easily”.

Roles

WordPress uses roles which are designed to give the blog owner the capabiliity to control and assign what users can and cannot do in the blog. A blog owner can manage and allow access to such functions as reading and writing posts, creating categories and moderating comments, to name a few. The following is a summary of the actions that a role is allowed to perform:

• Administrator – Somebody who has access to all the administration features
• Editor – Somebody who can publish and manage posts and pages as well as manage other users’ posts, etc.
• Author – Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor – Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish them
• Subscriber – Somebody who can only manage their profile

Posts

A Post can be created by most user roles using the  rich text Editor. You can save drafts, edit and preview your work before publishing. You can subsequently edit the post. The editor has a set of tools that include the embedding of images and media. You can create tags and categories and assign them to the post. This aids in searching the site.

Comments

Editors monitor the comments received as replies to the posts. The editor is free to modify the content as well as trash them.

Summary

In summary, the WordPress installation is a snap. The Setup is a work in progress but the hard part is coming up with the content.