Prodigy Productions, LLC

So, you’re looking for a way to make some money on the web? Well, the first thing you’re going to need is a web site. You can go out and spend a truck load of money paying a professional web developer or purchasing a pre-designed system. Or, you can save yourself a lot of trouble and take the easy route. I’m talking about WordPress. To quote the WordPress website, “WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.” And I’m telling you now that the last sentence in that quote could not be any more true! WordPress provides you with the simplest way of creating a professional website in no time. In fact, this website was created using WordPress and it only took me about 5 minutes to implement. Now, I’ve designed hundreds, if not thousands of websites in my life and I can tell you from first hand experience that it would take weeks, months, or even years to create a site like this by hand.

To begin, head over to http://wordpress.org/download/ and click the blue download button at the top right or grab the download directly from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip. As of the writing of this article, WordPress is at version 3.0.1. You can also get the tarball download from http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz if you’re not using a Windows PC. Save this file to an easy to remember location on your file system. Personally, I’d recommend creating a folder just for your new website that includes a downloads folder and save the WordPress download there. I’ll explain in another post how to configure your file system properly for best usability and navigation. But, for now, saving the file anywhere on your file system will be sufficient.

Once you’ve downloaded the WordPress file, you’ll need to open Windows Explorer (if running on Windows) and extract the compressed file. There are plenty of compression utilities out there and Windows even has one installed natively. To use the built-in file extractor, simply right-click on the file, scroll down and click on “Extract All…” A dialog window will open that has a destination for extracting the files to. You can choose another location by using the “Browse…” button or you can simply hit the “Extract” button at the bottom and extract the files into the default location.

After you’ve extracted the WordPress files, you only really need to modify one file: the configuration file or “config” for short. The config is a file that tells WordPress how to operate and how to connect to the database. Technically, the installer is suppose to create the config file for you. But, the included “readme.html” file indicates that this doesn’t work with all servers. So, for a little more knowledge sake, I’m going to explain to you how to create and setup this file manually.

To begin, make a copy of the “wp-config-sample.php” file and name the copy “wp-config.php”. Then, use a text editor (I use Wordpad since it’s built into Windows) to open the new “wp-config.php” file. With the config file open, scroll down until you see the line:

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘database_name_here’);

Replace the part for ‘database_name_here’ with the actual name of the database you plan on using, but be sure to leave the single tick marks ( ‘ ) around the database name. Do the same for DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, and DB_HOST by replacing those variables with the actual values for your databse. (I’ll explain in another post how to setup a database.) After you’ve made your changes for the databse, you will need to change the unique keys and salts which are right below the database properties in the config file. The unique keys and salts are used for authentication and provide an extra layer of security to your website for users. Since user authentication information is stored in cookies in the users’ browsers, you can invalidate all existing cookies by changing these unique keys and salts at any time. You can set these unique phrases to anything you like. Or, to keep things simple, but make security a little stronger, you can generate random keys by going to https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/, copying the keys from your browser, deleting the keys in your config file, and pasting the newly generated keys where the old keys used to be. Once you’ve changed your database properties and unqiue keys, you’re finished. Just be sure to save the config file before you close it!

That’s all there is to do for getting a website. In my next article, I will show you how to find someone to host your website and how to install the WordPress files we just created. At some point, I will also write an article explaining how to customize your WordPress website.

Related Posts

• Start Your Own URL Shortening Website
• Picking a Domain Name
• Installing WordPress
• Finding a Host
• Welcome to my site!