Updated on Jun 21, 2019
WordPress is, without a doubt, one of the best open source free platforms for building professional and stunningly beautiful websites. For the past few years, the platform became the most used application for a significant number of clients.
For complete hosting beginners, we recommend you check our "How to Install WordPress via Softaculous" tutorial. While we do offer Softaculous on all FastCloud hosting plans, being able to install WordPress manually by using the official file package and an FTP client will be useful for any webmaster. WordPress is well-known for its ease of installation. Under most circumstances, installing WordPress is straightforward process and takes less than five minutes to complete.
To install WordPress manually, you will need to know:
The installation will require you to download the main installation package for the application. It is distributed and available for downloads on the official community WordPress website.
Once you press the Download WordPress button, you will be redirected to the download page of the platform where clicking on another similar button you will download the latest version of the installation archive.
For the sake of security matters, we always recommend downloading the latest stable version of WordPress. It will guarantee that your business is protected against the most current vulnerabilities on the "market" and also be patched for security holes regularly.
As soon as you have downloaded the installation archive, it is time for you to extract it and check the contents of the installation files.
After the extraction process, you will end up with a folder named wordpress. If you access that folder, you will be able to see all of the files required for the application to be correctly installed.
What you need to do with these files is to upload them in the directory of your hosting account where your application should be. Of course, if you want your website to be accessed via your primary domain, you should put all of the files in the public_html directory.
The upload method you can utilize is a simple FTP service. If you are not quite sure how to use an FTP service for uploading files, please check our FTP tutorial series.
Once you choose an FTP service and connect to the server, navigate to the folder, you have selected for your application. Then upload the files using your FTP client's options.
When all of the files get uploaded in the desired folder, it is time for the installation process to begin. To do that you must access the URL related to the folder in which the WordPress platform should be. In this particular case, that will be the public_html folder. So, to access the installation wizard, we will need to access the primary domain for our account – example.com.
Once accessed, via a browser of your choosing, the following will be displayed, where you will have to choose the desired language.
As soon as you access the installation wizard you will notice the message that there is no configuration file. It is ok and you have not done nothing wrong. This warning message is displayed where indeed there is no configuration file for the platform and it normal for the same to be displayed considering the fact that this is new installation.
In the next step, the wizard will inform you what type of requirements you will need to cover for the platform to work on the server. Of course, since WordPress is a PHP/MySQL driven application, you will need a database.
If you are not sure how to create a new database and to assign a user to operate with it, please check our tutorial on "How to Create a Database via cPanel".
Once you have created a new database and you have assigned a user for the same, please click the "Let's go!" button for the installation process to continue.
On the next page, you will need to fill all the database data fields for the platform to use a database.
As soon as you fill all the required information please press the Submit button so the installation process can continue with the next step.
As you can see, the next step is to inform you that the data you have entered related to your database is correct, and the installation process can continue. Please click the Run the install button.
On the following page, you will need to fill the required fields for the completion of the installation process.
The next screen will inform you that the installation process has finished correctly. So you should now login into the admin area of your website by pressing the login button.
Congratulations! You have installed WordPress manually on your hosting account.