This article will show you how to install WordPress on the ITP Student server for all your documentations needs.
We will be installing your blog on the ITP Student Server, which is a computer with no screen or keyboard that you can’t touch so we’ll need a program to access this computer and put your files on it.
To do this we’ll get Cyberduck, an FTP program. FTP is like HTTP but is for moving files only and not web pages.
Download and install.
Next we need to download WordPress which is a program but works in a different way than .app and .exe files. There are hundreds of files ending in .php that together form the WordPress web application.
Download WordPress by clicking here. It doesn’t matter what operating system you use.
Download the zip file and hold on to it for a later step.
During setup we’ll need to edit a few files. Your computer already has a program to edit these files with, but there are better ones out there.
If you think you’ll be doing a lot of web programming I highly recommend getting Sublime Text 2. It costs money but comes with a free trial.
Now we’re going to connect to the Student Server. Open Cyberduck and click the “Open Connection” button.
Click connect.
You’ve downloaded WordPress as a .zip file. With Cyberduck we’ll need to unzip WordPress before we upload it.
Unzip wordpress-3.4.1.zip by double clicking on it.
Rename the folder to whatever you want your blog to be called. For instance, if you don’t rename the folder your blog will be:
http://itp.nyu.edu/~sk3453/wordpress
I’m going to name my folder “blog.”
Now go back to Cyberduck and double click on public_html. Everything inside this folder can be accessed from a web browser. And that’s exactly what we want WordPress to be.
So now that the public_html folder is opened drag your WordPress files, folder and all, and drop it inside of Cyberduck.
A window will pop up and tell you how everything is transferring. While we wait for WordPress to upload, we need to get the password to your database.
WordPress, and most other web applications, consist of 3 parts
That was a long winded way to say that there are a lot of different parts working together to make WordPress work. The takeaway here is that your blog posts live in the database, your theme lives in the /wp-content/themes folder and everything else you can leave alone.
In Cyberduck click the BACK button and look for a file called “sqlpw.” Right click on this file and download it. It’s a file that has plain text in it but your computer doesn’t know how to open it. Right click on the downloaded ‘sqlpw’ file and select OPEN WITH and choose a text editor (TextWrangler, Notepad++, TextEdit, etc).
What you see is your password to log in to the database. Select it with your cursor and copy it (Mac: CMD+C, Windows: CTRL+C).
Now go to your blog, mine is here:
http://itp.nyu.edu/~sk3453/blog
Substitute your netid and whatever you named your WordPress folder for ‘sk3453′ and ‘blog’ respectively.
Click “Create Configuration File”.
This screen tells you what you need to set up WordPress, we have it all. Click “Let’s Go.”
Set “Database name” to your netID.
Fill in this form using your netID as the username and paste the password in the password field (MAC: CMD+P, Windows: CTRL+P). Make sure there are no spaces at the end of your password.
You can leave everything else alone, you must leave ‘Database Host’ as ‘localhost’.
Now set your username and password and hit submit.