Lesson 3 – Installing WordPress

by Mark Patchett
in Part 2 – Build & Launch · Start Your Own Startup

What we’re going to cover

1. What WordPress is and why it’s awesome
2. How to install WordPress with one click (well a few, but they’re easy)
3. How to login into the WordPress backend

After this lesson you’ll have WordPress installed and the core of your site live.

1. What is WordPress?

WordPress is the worlds largest blogging/Website platform – with over 60 million WordPress sites live!

In a nutshell, WordPress is the backend of your website.

Instead of having to deal with “code” – you get a super simple interface.

You can write articles, change menu items, add users, update the look of your site and so much more.

Does WordPress come with everything you need out of the box?

Yes and no.

WordPress works fine “out of the box” – but the magic is in the abundance of available themes and plugins.

Themes are what control the look of your website. You’ll be finding yours next lesson.

Plugins are add ons (with a 1 click install) that pretty much allow you to do anything you want. Whether it’s taking payments, adding an email signup form, displaying the local weather or adding live chat – plugins do it all!

Getting that sort of functionality would cost $1,000s on regular websites.

With WordPress it’s either free or extremely affordable.

We’ll be going through all the essential plugins in Lesson 6.

Let’s get WordPress installed!

2. How to install WordPress with GoDaddy Hosting

As the title implies, we’ll be covering installing WordPress via the GoDaddy hosting admin.

If you haven’t got your hosting yet, go sign up with GoDaddy now or head back to Lesson 1 and scroll to “4. How to register your domain and setup hosting”.

If you already have hosting elsewhere, use this guide here to get WordPress installed.

Login to your GoDaddy account
Under “Web Hosting” select “Launch” next to your account

Just ignore the “Censored” image. I’ve added it to conceal some private details.

Select the main domain you want to use for your site and continue

If you’re wondering, mightylittlebusiness.com was the first name I considered, which led to mightylittlestartups.com ; )

Select “Install WordPress”

Fill the details out as follows

Domain: ensure correct domain is selected
Directory: leave blank
Username: (It’s not case sensitive) add something memorable, as you’ll login with these details – just don’t use the word “admin” by itself as sites with just “admin” as the username are more vulnerable to hackers
Password: something including a capital and lowercase letter, number and special numeral e.g. ! or *
Email: an active email that you want to correspond with your WordPress account

REMEMBER YOUR USERNAME AND PASSWORD! You’ll need these to login.

If you see that little graphic spinning, your site is installing. This will take around 10-20 minutes.

Here are some excellent videos to help you pass the time:

Once your site is installed you’ll receive an email like the one below.
Click your admin link and then scroll down to the next step on this page

3. Verifying your WordPress install and logging in

The link you just clicked in your confirmation email will take you to your admin login page. This is the url you will always use to login.

It is simply www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin

Your login screen will look like the screenshot below.

Once you’re there, follow these steps:

Enter your username/password. These are the details you nominated when installing WordPress

If you arrive at the page below, your install has worked! Nicely done.
You don’t need to bother with the welcome prompts. So close them all (as indicated by the orange arrows).

To wrap this lesson up, we’ll have a quick look at your current site. Hover over “My Site” up the top left and select “Visit Site”
Your site will look just like below. Hold tight…it won’t look like this for long : )