Category Archives: WordPress

Domain Registration, Hosting, Internet, WordPress

MySQL and WordPress

WordPress requires a relational database. Before you get WordPress up and running, you have to set up a MySQL database on your hosting account. Sure, this sounds complicated but it’s not. If you can make a new folder in Windows, you can create a database for WordPress. Here’s how it’s done. Pictures following are from a cPanel demo site. Yours may differ somewhat.

1. Head over to your hosting account, log in and take a close look at your dashboard or control panel. What you are looking for is ‘MySQL Database(s)’:

MySql Database Icon
This is what you are looking for.

2. Click on the MySql Database Icon. This is what you should see:

MySQL settings to add new database
Add a new database here, create a password and add a user.

3. Use this menu to create a database, create a password and add a user. You need these three pieces of information BEFORE you get WordPress up and running. When you are installing WordPress you add this information to it’s config file once. WordPress uses this database from then on. I would use the password generator but you can make up any name for the database and any user. You can name them both the same, if you want.

TIP: If your host has limited your account to only a few databases, mine has not, you can still run multiple installations of WordPress from the same database. I will show you how to do that later. I have 12 sites on the same account but I only have about 5 databases.

4. This is what the MySql menu looks like on my hosting account. Yours may be the same. :

Deck 4 MySQL Menu
Same concept, different look. The button on the top left is the one you want to create a new database.

This is the only preliminary work you have to do before installing WordPress. You’ve already created the folder in your root directory, right? We did that in this POST. Once you have done these two steps, it’s OK to download WordPress, unzip it and wait for my next post.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney 

Internet, WordPress

WordPress Explained

Before I describe the steps to install WordPress, I thought I would take a few minutes to explain what it’s all about. Here we go.

In the early days of the Internet, HTML was king. Every website was based in this text-based language which used tags to hide the inner workings of a web page. Adding < > with some text inside, <html> for example, turned a normal text file into a file that could be viewed in a browser, without the <html> being shown. This was fine for a while but as pages became more complicated and websites became larger, HTML moved out of the range of the average person. Thankfully, WordPress came along in 2003 to save the day.

Any HTML site had to be updated, changed and designed in an editor. Sweeping changes could take days or weeks. WordPress solved this problem. Using a browser, anyone could update, change or design their site without knowing anything about HTML. Sure, it’s handy to know a bit of HTML but that isn’t 100% necessary. WordPress can handle a simple blog or a massively complicated website all on its own, thank you very much!

This blog post is being written in Google Chrome from my SOHO office. Tomorrow, I could write another post from my tiny netbook while I sip a cuppa in a coffee shop. Theoretically, I could update this blog from the other side of the world while sitting in an Internet cafe. I don’t need anything other than a password and a browser to log-in to WordPress and update this blog. There are some news sites around the world that use WordPress for their correspondents who update their input from all corners of the world. Here is a list of spectacular and well-known WordPress sites: WordPress-Showcase.

WordPress can have a simple, clean layout or it can be tuned to do pretty much anything you can think of. In order to use it, all you have to do is be able to use a password and a keyboard. In order to use it well, you have to search, read and experiment before you can create something better than the standard WordPress site. The beauty of WordPress is that it can be pretty much what you want it to be, it’s all up to you and how deeply you want to get into it.

All of the changes you make in WordPress are made inside your browser of choice. I use Chrome but you could use Safari or Firefox, whatever you want. The interface is really no different from the Word interface, with all of the controls across the top and links on either side to adjust other settings. Sure, initially this all looks very confusing but, trust me, after a while it feels like home. Images are uploaded right from the browser, not FTP. (Not that FTP is difficult but it’s an impediment to creativity sometimes, another step before you get to where you want to be.)

WordPress can be changed with dozens and dozens of themes , many of them free, which tinker with the look and feel of your final output. Plugins add other types of functionality, making WordPress do different things behind the scenes. None of this is rocket science. Some parts are confusing, certainly, but if you get stumped on something, there is always Google and a wealth of information available from other WordPress users.

One of the caveats to WordPress that I should explain is its slowness. Many people say that WordPress slows down your site. It does, but there are ways around that. I will discuss these in future posts but don’t consider this an impediment. Use my previous posts to set up your website and come back tomorrow to find out how to install it. Right now, check out the WordPress Showcase above, look for some free themes and decide what style and color combination that you prefer.

Thanks for reading! If you need info or want to comment, just ask and write below this. Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney

Domain Registration, Hosting, Internet, WordPress

Basic HTML Placeholder

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An HTML placeholder is a small file that shows up when someone goes to your new domain name before you have a full-fledged website set up. Consider it a virtual ‘coat on the back of a chair’ at a party. You’re going to sit in the chair, just not yet. The placeholder lets everyone know that your site exists, it works but there isn’t anything there yet. It’s live in other words, just not fully filled out.

Putting up a placeholder is very easy. Here’s how you do it:

1. Open Notepad. Don’t use Word or Wordpad or anything else except a text editor. Notepad is free, comes with Windows and is in your Accessory folder.

2. Copy this text and paste it into Notepad :

<html><head><title>Welcome to suchandsuch.com</title></head><body><h1>Welcome!</h1>

This site is under construction. We'll be up and running as soon as possible. Bookmark this url and come back later. See ya!

</body></html>


3. Type in your domain name where I have ‘suchandsuch.com’ then save the file as an .html file NOT as a .txt. file. (Click on the tiny arrow to the right of .txt and choose ‘all files’.


4. If you accidentally save it as a text file, just rename it as an .html file, ending up with index.html on your desktop.


5. Double click this file to see what it looks like. It’s about as simple as it can be but it gets the message across. You can align the text in the centre, use colors or whatever you want but this is about the simplest .html file you can make.


6. Using FTP or your host’s File Manager, upload that file to the sub-directory that you created in my last post.


7. The index.html file should be the only file there. Once it’s up, open another browser window and type in your domain name and hit enter. There it is! Your placeholder. If you don’t see it, then the file is named incorrectly. Make sure that it is  index.html   (all in small letters, no caps and with the period before html, no spaces).


Once this page is up, you can relax for a while and figure out how to install WordPress. If you want to stick to html, fine but you’re on your own there. I have moved all of my sites to WordPress just because it’s so damn simple to update.


I’ve explained the WordPress installation in previous posts. Here is a link to the first one: WordPress Installation .


Over the next few posts I will revisit the WordPress installation for you but read the old ones for now. Good luck!


Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney