### This instruction guide assumes you have some prior knowledge to PHP and MySQL and experience with web hosting. If you are a beginner to programming you can learn the languages mentioned at W3school.com while also contacting your hosting provider for more details.

This guide is for those that would like to install their own blog. According to Wordnetweb.com a blog is “a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies.” The blog software is the system that allows you to post, and read others posts. Anyone can set up a blog for themselves, and hosting it on their own website. I am going to share with you the process of installing a blog, so you can start blogging today.

1. Finding and installing a blog

There are many companies that allow you to use their software to blog. They give you the system, and all that’s left to do is install it and you are ready to start writing. The most popular companies that make blogs are Wordpress, B2Evolution, Text Pattern, and Nucleus. The one that you have most likely heard about is Wordpress, as it is among the most popular. I am going to focus on Wordpress in this article, but feel free to explore the others.

The first step is downloading the necessary files to install Wordpress to your website. You can download the latest version here: www.wordpress.org/latest.zip

Once you finish downloading the latest version you can open this .zip file with your favorite unpacking tool (such as WinRar). The first file that you will notice is the ReadMe.html file (look below) that will give you your next set of instructions, don’t worry we are going to go through this together.

So first things first. You need to drag the folder Wordpress from the .zip file somewhere on your computer. We are going to change a few things before uploading it to your server.

The file that needs to be changed is wp-config-sample.php, which is located in the folder Wordpress that you just placed on your computer. Open this file with a text editor. In windows open Notepad (programs > accessories > notepad) and click file, then open. Find wp-config-sample.php which is, again, in the Wordpress folder. Once you open this file you should be seeing this code:

The first thing you have noticed is that you need a database, user name, etc. This is the point where you call up your hosting provider and find out this information (that’s what they are there for — although they might disagree).

You are going to need to ask these questions:

a. What’s my username to access MySql
b. What’s my password to access MySql
c. How do I create a database –> then get the name of the database you created

Also don’t forget to go to http://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/, to get your authorization key, secure auth. key, logged in key, and nonce key.

The fields that need to be changed are highlighted in the picture below:

After you have updated this information it’s time to rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php.

Now you need to upload the entire Wordpress folder to your server. Before doing so rename your Wordpress folder to “blog”. Log in accordingly and upload the folder to your main directory (generally this is public_html), I recommend using www.YourDomain.com/blog because this is a standard in the industry, a standard worth following.

You have everything uploaded and now it’s time to go to www.YourDomain.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php, to finish the installation of your blog. The instructions are fairly simple and will give you the password that you need to complete the installation as well.

Well now you are ready to start blogging! Of course there is a learning curve involved in installing your own blog, so if you don’t have the time or it’s not your specialty, I recommend getting someone to do this for you.

Let me know if something was left out, as I will surely give you the information necessary to complete the installation.

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