Over the last few weeks WordPress has become my favorite peice of web technology, and it seems I am not the only one with
this opinion. Unless you are a web geek like me, you may not realize just how many websites on the internet are built using this program.

WordPress is an open source (free) blog tool that allows you to quickly and easily construct a basic blog page that can be expanded
on with plugins and themes to create a powerful and very nice looking website.

I personally am a self tought web designer….and am by no means a master coder, but after the initial setup, wordpress allows you to create a website using a simple
backend and start posting articles with very little web coding knowledge.

The process of installing wordpress is as follows:

1. Buy a domain name and some web hosting (needed to host a website) and make sure the host runs at least mysql so you can create
a database (eg: http://www.website.com.au).

2. Through your web providers interface, create a mysql database, and a user for that database.

3. Download WordPress from here, unzip and FTP the contents
onto your webserver, under a subfolder if you wish (eg: “http://www.website.com.au/wordpress/”)

4. There is a file inside the wordpress folder called ‘wp-config-sample.php’…this is where you enter the database details you have create in mysql…
you also put the authentication keys and salts here (an extra layer of security)…once done, rename the file ‘wp-config.php’.

5. Install WordPress by going to http://www.website.com.au/wp-admin/install.php or http://www.website.com.au/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php if
you have used a subdirectory (changing the name according to the subdirectory name you have used of course)…the install screen will ask you to
create a site title and user to log in as.

6. That is pretty much it for a basic set up, you can log into wordpress using the user you created and start posting articles straight away
using the very user friendly interface.

This is only a basic install, not including adding themes or plugins that can be used to further customize a website,
but it is pretty much as easy as it comes for someone who doesn’t know much about web design.

I would say the only difficult part of wordpress is designing a template…especially if you are intergrating it into a current website that is a
few years old…but the wordpress website has a very extensive document section, so you can start with the basic stuff and work your way
up from there.

Unbelievable WordPress is free and available here

Chris Thursfield