Exactly what you need to install WordPress

Good job getting your custom email accounts setup last week with Google Standard Apps and starting to work with your domain manager, website hosting, and database!  I have a little more stuff on email accounts for you and then I’ll go over the specifics you’ll need to install WordPress next week in the lab.  Sorry, I should have done this last week…but this is more fun than using a textbook and doing presentations every class, right?

We didn’t customize gmail so that you can send an email with your custom domain name through gmail, but that’s easy to add, so please try to do that on your own.  Go to gmail–>Settings–>Accounts and Import–>Send mail as–>Send mail from another address.  Have you added your gmail account to Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, etc.?  You should also create a filter on gmail emails you receive that you don’t want to see.  Sending email from your domain name address is good promotion management: “After you have chosen and registered your own domain name, make sure you use it on all your web pages, and on all your correspondence, like e-mail and traditional mail.”

It’s tricky connecting the definitions at w3Schools to the latest best practices, but that’s why we’re spending lots of time in the lab.  Thanks for your patience.  The more work you can do outside of class the better.  You need to get comfortable googling error messages, googling questions you have, and calling your host for help.  You can also email/tweet/fb me your questions if you’re stuck and can’t make office hours.

Before you start writing awesome blog posts and promoting your cause with pings/tweets/links, etc. let’s make sure you have the information you need about your domain name, website hosting, and MySQL database.

Your domain:  You need to have access to your Domain Name System records.  The important ones for this class are the NS, MX, and CNAME records.

Your host: You need to figure out how to ftp files to your html root directory.  For example, media temple tells me that primary domain is ftp.theglobalwineindstry.com and what my admin username and password are.  It also tells me that my html root directory is in /domains/theglobalwineindustry.com/html.

Your database: This is where your 1’s and 0’s that make up your website reside.  WordPress requires a MySQL database.  You need to know your DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, and DB_HOST in order to install WordPress.

We’ll go over Installing WordPress in the lab next week, and then the following week we’ll go over Chapter 3 of Digging into WordPress.

Don’t feel like you have to wait until next lab to install WordPress.  Once you get the information outlined above watch a video tutorial on how to install WordPress and follow along.   This one looks pretty recent.

If you have WordPress up and running see if you can figure out how to create subdomains…