Avoiding Common Installation Problems With WordPress

The official WordPress.org support forum is fast approaching 200,000 posts requesting help with WordPress installation problems.

I’ve spent many hours helping out beginners fix these problems and worked out what the major cause of the problem is – Manual installation.

At the end of this post i’ll give you a list of 3 recommended providers which all offer automatic installation of WordPress and 2/3 offer a free transfer service if you’re moving WordPress to a new server.

This will avoid the most common installation problems suffered by beginners installing WordPress manually.

The only reason you would manually install WordPress is if your web server doesn’t offer a one click or simple installation script.

If this is the case, then you need to install WordPress manually using these instructions.

Installation Guide

I’ve already written about 5 ways to install WordPress however here’s another solution which is fairly similar and also avoids common problems caused when editing the WordPress configuration file.

Create a Database

Create a new database using the database wizard in cPanel.

Take note of your database details:

• database name
• database username
• database password

Download WordPress

Go to http://wordpress.org/download and download the latest version of WordPress

Open the zipped WordPress download folder on your desktop and drag the wp-config.php file onto your desktop

Open the file with notepad++ and enter your database details 

Close the file and save the changes.

Drag the wp-config.php file back into your zipped WordPress download folder.

Upload WordPress

Upload the WordPress folder (zip or tar) to your domains public_html root directory. You can do this using File Manager in cPanel or FTP.

Here’s a video on how to find your public_html root directory for your domain you’ll be uploading WordPress into.

Extract the folder contents into your domains folder making sure you don’t create another folder inside your domains directory.

Install WordPress

Type in your domain name into your browser and add /wp-admin/install.php on the end.

Example: http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php

Complete the installation instructions and you’re done

WordPress Installation Help

If you suffer from any installation errors, you can try the WordPress.org/support – Installation Forum

The major causes of installation problems are:

• incorrect editing of the wp-config file database details.
• uploading WordPress to the wrong location on your server
• using a web server that doesn’t support standard WordPress hosting requirements

Avoiding Installation Problems

As you can see from the above instructions, there’s many things which can go wrong when installing WordPress manually.

To avoid these problems, use one of the 3 recommended web hosting providers below which all support one click installation of WordPress and avoid the pain and frustration caused by problems when installing WordPress manually.

• Bluehost
• Hostgator – Offers free transfer
• GreenGeeks – Offers free transfer

Did you ever suffer any problems when installing WordPress? Got any tips on how to avoid these problems?