If you are a blogger or considering blogging you will either be very familiar with wordpress or at least have read about it a few times and noticed that many blogs run on the wordpress platform. The good thing is that if you visit wordpress.com you can get your own blog setup very quickly and with free hosting so you dont have to worry about that.

But if you are looking for a bit more flexibility, like being able to run your own advertisements on your blog and knowing that you have the extra freedom to do what you want with your wordpress blog then self hosting is what you will be looking for.

At first, especially if you have never used a web host service before you may feel intimidated by it but not only can it be less complicated than many people imagine, but it can also be very cheap and you may be amazed to find out how cheaply you can have your own web hosting account for, payed on a monthly basis, or yearly.

Self hosting doesn't mean that you have to setup a server on your home pc or laptop, it just means that you have your own hosting account with a company and they provide you with storage space, bandwidth, basic email accounts to use, often use of MySQL or MS SQL databases and other features, dependant on where you choose to host your blog.

Wordpress is a PHP based script and requires a MySQL database to run the backend and provide the frontend, the frontend being what you and visitors see, and if you choose to self host your blog what you would do is look for web hosting that allows you to setup MySQL databases, this will be done through a control panel, cPanel often being one of the most popular control panels installed in the admin section of your account.

You only need use of one MySQL database per install of wordpress, but if you wanted to setup a few wordpress blogs then you would need to make sure that your host allows for this, some will offer 5, 10, 20 or unlimited databases and of course any number in between those numbers.

Setting up a MySQL database for use with wordpress includes setting a database name, username and password then adding those details to the wp-config.php file and saving the details before uploading the wordpress script to the server used with your account at the web host and installing using your browser.

Full instructions are available at the wordpress.org website and the process is made as easy as possible, but understandably you still may not want to try installing the wordpress script manually yet, even though you have chosen self hosting and may feel unsure about what to do, well dont panick because there is a option that will make it easier for you, although there are drawbacks it will still mean you can get wordpress installed on your own hosting account without having to do the whole lot manually.

And how you can do that is through fantastico, it is a scripts library that is often included with linux based hosting ( although not always, and not included with windows based hosting ) and it has some of the most popular php scripts contained within it for very quick and simple installation and this is what you will be looking for as the simplest way to install wordpress on the server.

You need to make sure that you have fantastico, it will be within the control panel, or if your still shopping around for hosting look for hosting with fantastico, it will usually be listed in the list of features when a web hosting company is telling you what you get included in a package from them.

Eventually i would always advise and suggest to learn how to install scripts like wordpress manually, that means without the use of fantastico to help you, but i know what its like when your first trying to get your head around working with something new and it can be confusing when your first learning.

So if you are choosing to host your own wordpress blog, look for the following when looking for an affordable web hosting service.

1. Linux/Unix based Server, usually clearly stated but ask the company if your not sure.
2. The option to setup one or more MySQL databases for each install of wordpress that you may want to use.
3. Fantastico, if you would rather not install manually yet and need it to be as simple as possible.

The one main drawback of installing wordpress using fantastico at your host is that it isn't always updated as quickly as the latest version of wordpress is released, this is dependant on your web host, so when you install through fantastico it may be an older version of wordpress and it may not be updated as quickly, if you know that you want and must have the latest version of wordpress installed then manual installation must be your choice, so if you feel nervous about a manual installation you can always ask someone like a close friend who has installed it before to help you.

Good luck on your way to becoming a self hosted wordpress blogger.

Filed under: Website Script Installation by admin Published June 11, 2008