Create a smart blog

Setting up a blog is easy. Anyone looking for a platform to air their views can quickly create a free journal with the likes of Blogger and Live Journal. However, while these and similar services are perfectly acceptable tools they do have limitations.

For those wanting a greater degree of control over a blog, it makes sense to start from scratch with an SQL-based tool.

One such is Wordpress and in this Masterclass we’re going to reveal not only how to get a blog up and running, but also how to benefit from more advanced features, such as trackbacks and pingbacks, which allow other people to let you know when they respond to your blog posts on another site.

So, if you fancy turning an ordinary blog into an extraordinary one, read on. Do remember, though, our Masterclasses are for those wanting a challenge.

Hosted webspace and FTP
For this Masterclass we’ll assume you already have some hosted web space available that supports SQL databases. More specifically, before getting started with a self-hosted Wordpress blog, check the host supports PHP 4.2 or higher and MySQL 4.0 or higher ­ configuring the necessary MySQL database is one of the first steps to getting up and running. Intimate knowledge of SQL is not necessary, though, as much of the Wordpress installation is automated.

Make sure that a database has been set up on your web space and make a note of the username and password. Aside from these requirements, the only other thing needed is an FTP tool to upload files. Technically, FTP uploading can be achieved with nothing more than Windows but it’s a bit tricky. Better to download a decent FTP program, such as Filezilla).

Uploading Wordpress
Download the latest version of Wordpress from our website. Extract the compressed file that has been downloaded, rename the file wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and use a text editor such as Notepad to open it for editing.

In the third line of the file, replace the word ‘putyourdbnamehere’ with the name of the SQL database that has been created on your hosted web space. It is important to leave the single quotes in place. In the fourth line replace the word ‘usernamehere’ with the database username and on the next line replace ‘yourpasswordhere’ with the necessary password.

With all this done, save and close the file and then use an FTP program to upload the entire contents of the extracted ‘wordpress’ folder, including the three folders it contains, to the top-level folder of your site.

Open a browser window and type in your website address followed by /wp-admin/install.php (so the full address would be something like www.mysite.co.uk/wp-admin/install.php). If an error message appears, check the database information mentioned earlier has been correctly entered to the wp-config.php file. It may be necessary to change the sixth line of this file (the ‘localhost’ part), according to how your host requires a connection to be established with a database, though it can usually be left as is.

Once a connection has been established, the Wordpress installation wizard will appear. Enter a name for the blog along with a contact email address and then click Install Wordpress. Make a note of the username and password generated and click the ‘log in’ link.