OK, so you've got a domain name and set up a hosting account for your new WordPress website (explained in my previous post).

What next?

For this, I'll be following the instructions on the WordPress website: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress

(You need to install WordPress itself first, before you install Thesis or any other themes.)

The installation instructions web page looks so long I have doubts that their "famous 5-minute installation" really will take 5 minutes! I'll time how long it takes me to do it and will write the steps I've taken as well.

1. Download WordPress

Here's the page where you do that: http://wordpress.org/download/

Unzip the downloaded file and save it on your computer's hard drive. (I've saved mine to the C-drive, in "Program Files".)

OK, that's the easy bit. It gets a bit trickier now.

Time elapsed so far: 8 minutes

2. Install WordPress onto your web host

I'd suggest ignoring the instructions on the WordPress website, they are VERY confusing and I've wasted a heap of time trying to follow them.

Instead, this video is really helpful:



Time elapsed so far: 46 minutes (told you I'd wasted a lot of time!)

Uploading the files by FTP to my web host took approx. 12 minutes (on broadband).

I wasn't sure whether I was uploading to the right folder, as both the video and WordPress instructions are vague on this. In my cast, I uploaded to the "htdocs" folder.

Has it worked? Nope, not yet. I tried going to my website and got an error message:

Error establishing a database connection