Installation of Wordpress 4.0 on Simple Hosting

This guide is intended to help you install WordPress 4 on a Gandi Simple Hosting instance.

Requirements:

• A PHP/MySQL Simple Hosting instance of any size (the size will only matter with regards to how frequently your blog is visited and its resulting subsequent needs in terms of power, but an S instance size is fine for a personal website),
• The Wordpress 4 installation files (available at here, for example)

Before we go any farther, it is worth noting that you will eventually need to access your instance's control panel so that you have access to the phpMyAdmin login page (what is used to manage the database). You will need to create a database - something that we will discuss further on in this guide.

Since the upload process is lengthy due to the number of files, we will begin with this part of the process.

Start by decompressing the installation files linked to above which should have been downloaded as a compressed file called latest.zip on your computer. You will need to uncompress them, and once done, you will have a folder called “wordpress” on your computer.

Open a sFTP client (such as Filezilla) and connect to your instance (how?).

Then, navigate to the vhosts/ directory, then to the subdirectory where you want your WordPress installation to be located (such as, for example, ”www.yourwebsite.com”), and finally to the directory where the website's visible contents should be: “htdocs”.

This is where we'll upload the contents of the wordpress/ directory (not the directory itself!) that you unzipped earlier. So in this example, you would put the files in the following directory: /lamp0/web/vhosts/www.yourwebsite.com/htdocs/

The upload may take a while (~30 minutes) regardless of the speed of your connection, due to the large number of files that must be written.

WordPress 4.0 requires access to your database, which you must create manually. To do so, go to your instance control panel and click the “Login” link that appears beside “Database.” You may be asked for your instance login credentials (instance ID, which is visible in the login prompt, and the password you defined when creating the instance):

Then, you'll also be prompted for your database login (by default, the username is “root” with no password):

Once logged into the phpMyAdmin interface, you'll find, at the top left-hand side of the screen, the list of existing databases. At the top of the list of databases, click the “New” link.

You will then be prompted to enter the name of the new database:

Enter wordpress in the “Database name” field. The dropdown menu to the right will say “Collation” by default; don't change that. Click the “Create” button:

A confirmation message (“Database wordpress has been created”) should appear briefly.

Once your database has been created, you can close the phpMyAdmin window.

Once all the files have been uploaded to your instance, open your favorite web browser and enter the domain name corresponding to the vhost address you created on your instance. In our case, that means: http://www.yourwebsite.com/

If everything is working as expected, you should see a screen with the WordPress logo and a prompt to choose the language of the installation:

The following screen summarizes the information you'll need for the installation. Click on “Let's go!”

We've now arrived at the most important part of this tutorial: entering the database connection credentials.

If you've created your database as described above, you should be able to enter the following information:

Database name: wordpress
Login: root
Password: Leave it blank
Database address: localhost
Table prefix: wp_

If after clicking “Submit” you see the following screen, the hard part is over:

The final steps are just to choose a title for your website, a login and a (complex) password. Enter your email address as well, so your WordPress installation can send you notifications if necessary.

WordPress is installed! Cheers!

Click “Log In” to complete the process and start to manage your blog.