What is WordPress?
WordPress is a highly customizable yet easy-to-use CMS (content management system) used extensively to create and manage websites. WordPress is used for everything from small personal blogs (where it got its start) all the way up to professional sites for large companies.
The strength of WordPress lies in the vast array of plugins, themes, and customization options available for the platform. This strength, however, can also be a weakness. Due to the open-source nature of WordPress, the vast number of plugins and themes available for the platform, as well as its own popularity, WordPress is a prime target for various thieves, fraudsters, and hackers.
Fortunately, there is also a wealth of security services (both free and subscription-based) and support sites available to help keep your site and data safe from would-be dastardly despots.
As for support, the community website wordpress.org has many support articles and a forum to help you out. You can also find hours of tutorials on youtube.com.
The main thing you need to know is that a WordPress site is not a “Once and Done” experience. If you do not keep your WordPress installation, as well as any plugins and themes, up to date, it will become vulnerable. Fortunately, we have some tools that can assist you.
Scope of this guide
There is no way we could cover everything you need to know about using WordPress in a guide like this (there are entire sites dedicated to this topic). What we can do is show you how to install a WordPress site in your cPanel and then gently push you in the right direction.
You can install WordPress manually by downloading the software, uploading it to your public_html folder, extracting the files, creating a database, and manually configuring everything. However, this can be quite a lengthy and challenging process for someone unfamiliar with these tasks. As luck would have it, your cPanel has a tool that will do most of the heavy lifting for you.
By installing WordPress using cPanel, you will also gain access to several tools that are not available when installing it manually. This includes the ability to log in to your WordPress admin from the cPanel without needing the WordPress password, as well as the ability to back up your site, create staging sites for updates, and even clone your site.
WordPress Softaculous Installation
Step 1: Go to: https://manage.christianwebhost.com/ or click the "Login" button located at the top right of our website. Unless you change them, your login details are the email address and password used when the account was created.
Step 2: Once logged in, click the Services block and choose your cPanel service to access its management page.
Step 3: From the Actions menu on the left, click Login to cPanel (you do not need your cPanel credentials for this method).
Step 4: To install WordPress for your domain, you first have to navigate to the Software section of your cPanel and click WordPress Manager by Softaculous.
- If you plan to install WordPress on a Subdomain or Addon domain, you will need to create it first.
Step 5: Once you click this tool, you should see a list of any WordPress installations you have already installed. You will also see buttons to Install and Scan.
- Install: This will allow you to install a new WordPress site.
- Scan: This will scan your domain's shared folder for an existing WordPress site that may have been manually installed or installed by other means.
Step 6: After clicking Install, you will be greeted with the WordPress install tool.
Step 7: Although there are several options on this page, we will focus on the Install section to initiate software setup. You can choose either the Custom or Quick Install. The only difference is that some sections don’t show under Quick Install (Site Settings, Choose Language, and Advanced).
Step 8: Choose installation URL.
- Choose Protocol: Choose between http:// (not encrypted) or https:// (encrypted). You will need an SSL certificate to use https://. You can also choose whether your site will use the www prefix. This is personal preference only.
- Choose Domain: You can select any domain, addon domain, or subdomain that you have set up in this cPanel account.
- In Directory: Choose what directory you want the WordPress files installed in. If you plan to install the site in your document root folder, leave this field blank. If you already have a site in that folder, you can install the site in a sub-folder so it does not interfere with the existing site. You can move it later if you prefer.
Step 9: Choose the version you want to install (typically, you will want to install the newest WordPress version). The only reason you may not want to is if some plugins or themes are not compatible with the latest version. While it is possible to use older versions of WordPress, its plugins, and themes, for security reasons, it is not recommended.
Step 10: Set up your site name and description in the Site Settings section. It is fine to leave these at the default settings, as you will always be able to update them later.
Step 11: Set up your admin account. You DO NOT want to leave these at the default settings.
- Choose a personal username (hackers know that many sites use “admin” as the username), a secure password, and make sure you use an active email address (it is a good idea to create an email for the sole purpose of managing your website, something like webmaster@domain.com).
- There are other options here (Enable Multisite, Disable WordPress Cron), but they are beyond the scope of this guide.
Step 12: Choose Language.
Step 13: Select Plugin(s). This allows you to install some basic plugins. These are optional, but we recommend selecting the Limit Login Attempts plugin. This will help protect your site from brute force attacks. The others are completely optional. You also have the option to create your own plugin set. Once again, this is outside the scope of this guide.
Step 14: Click the + symbol to the left of Advanced Options to open the advanced options menu. These options primarily focus on your database settings, auto-updates, and backups.
- Database Name: Choose a name for your WordPress database. The script will generate a random name for you by default, but you can change it if you like. This must be seven characters or fewer. You can also select whether to disable notification emails or to enable Auto Upgrade for your WordPress themes and plugins. While this may seem to be a good idea, depending on the plugins you use, you may want to control this manually.
- Table Prefix: This is the prefix that the script will add to all of the tables in the WordPress database. The script will generate one, but you can change it if you prefer; it must end with an underscore (“_”).
- Backup Location: This is where the script will save any backups created. For now, the only option is Local.
- Automated backups: Set the frequency of the site backups here. Depending on the level of activity on your site, you may want to set this to back up frequently. If the site is fairly static, it is less important.
- Backup Rotation: This refers to the number of backups the script will retain before overwriting the oldest backup. If you set this too high and have a large site, you may encounter disk space issues.
- You will need to monitor your disk usage closely when using automatic backups, as the space used by the backups is included in your overall disk usage. If you keep too many backups, you will run into disk space issues.
- Select Theme: Select a theme for your website. You can select one here now, or you can always update it later.
Step 15: Click the Install button at the bottom of the page to finalize your WordPress installation.
Step 16: The script will now run, installing your WordPress site and creating the database. Once it's complete, it will provide a summary of the installation, along with links to help you start using your new site. There is also the option to email the WordPress settings to an email address. This can be useful for record-keeping or if you have someone managing the site on your behalf. This email does not show the password.
Congratulations, you now have a WordPress site!