How to Install WordPress on Shared Hosting?
A few years ago, building a website meant investing in lots of pricey tools and hiring graphic designers to make it look perfect. However, with the emergence of platforms like WordPress, all that changed. Nowadays, anyone can easily create a website using this content management system and store it on one of the many shared hosting providers available online.
Before you begin the process of installing WordPress on your shared hosting plan, take some time to read this article. It will teach you everything you need to know about configuring the CMS and getting it up and running on shared hosting.
Why Should You Try WordPress On Shared Hosting?
There are several reasons why you should try out WordPress on shared hosting. To name a few:
- Cheap.
- Easy to use.
- Sleek design.
- A huge community.
- Lots of templates and the tools to customize them.
WordPress is probably the most popular blogging platform available today. It was originally created back in 2003 by Mike Little and was initially called “Blogging Software”. The platform has since evolved and now offers a variety of tools and features to help bloggers and website owners build and grow their audience.
Little published the first version of WordPress in 2004 and today, over 20 million copies have been downloaded globally. That’s a lot of people!
How Do I Install WordPress On Shared Hosting?
If you’re reading this, I assume you already have a WordPress website (or at least know what it is). Perhaps you even have a few blogs running on there. If not, there’s no need to worry – you can start from scratch with WordPress and never look back.
To install WordPress on shared hosting, you will need to navigate to your hosting cPanel and click on the “Install WordPress” button. This will bring you to a simple form where you can enter the requested information.
The first thing you need to do is enter a name for your new blog (this will automatically be the name of your WordPress installation too).
After you’ve entered a name for your blog, you will need to enter a username and a password for the WordPress account. Make sure to use a strong password that you will not easily guess.
The next step is to provide your new WordPress installation with a secure key (this will be required to activate the plugin and change the admin password).
Once you have entered a key, click on the “Next” button to continue entering site configuration information. You will need to input the admin email address and choose a password for the new WordPress installation. Make sure to use a strong password and be careful not to use any of the existing emails on your contact list.
Finally, you will need to select a secure and private key (these are the two important bits of information required to access your WordPress account) from the drop-down menu. Make sure that these match the keys you entered earlier.
After you’ve entered all of the above, click on the “Create Database” button to create a database for your new WordPress installation. This will ensure that all of the data you enter is saved and you don’t have to keep filling out the forms multiple times.
WordPress will then connect to your hosting cPanel and automatically create a folder for you to upload all of your blog content into (named after the username you entered).
If everything went well, you will see a success message from WordPress and you can click on the “Log In” button to log in to your new WordPress website.
Why Should You Use The Folders From WordPress?
When you upload files to your WordPress installation, they will be uploaded to a folder that was automatically created for you by the CMS. This is why it’s important to use the folders from WordPress – they will ensure your files are kept organized and easy to access.
WordPress provides you with several options for the location where your files are stored, but you should generally use the “wp-content” folder. This is the folder where WordPress stores all of the site’s content, including posts, images, and other file types. Ensure that this folder is set to be publicly readable and accessible so that everyone has the ability to check it out.
You could also choose to use a plugin like WordPress Folder as a way of further optimizing the location where your content is located. This plugin automatically moves all of the content from your blog’s main folder into sub folders based on the category you’ve assigned to each post. For example, if you publish a lot of food-related content, all of the content from your blog’s main folder will be moved into a sub-folder named “food”. This ensures that your blog has clearly defined categories and that all of the content is easily accessible.
Using A Widget-Ready Theme Is Important
When we say that WordPress is easy to use, we mean it. The software is so simple to operate that even beginners can easily figure out how to use it. This is probably why so many people have adopted it as their blogging platform of choice.
As a result, WordPress is a great choice for anyone who needs a content management system to run their blog or website. However, if you’re just getting started and don’t have a lot of experience, it’s important to pick a theme that is widget ready (these are the small boxes you can drag and drop to place at specific locations on your blog’s front page).
This will make it much simpler for you to edit and customize the look of your blog. With a custom theme, you’ll have to manually add widgets to your blog’s dashboard to use them. In most cases, you’ll also need to learn a bit of HTML to edit the theme’s code and make some small changes yourself. This is why we recommend using a ready-made theme instead – it will save you a lot of time and effort.
Categories And Tags Are Key
When a blog or website owner decides to group their content by topic, they use categories and tags. A category is simply a topic that you’ve chosen to group all of your blog posts about under one umbrella. For example, if you had a category named “Health Tips”, all of your posts pertaining to that topic would be grouped together and appear under that umbrella on your blog’s front page.
Tags are similar to categories in that they are used to group all of the blog posts pertaining to one topic under one umbrella. The only difference is that tags can be used to search for content that has been categorized or tagged with a certain keyword or phrase.
For example, if you’re a food blogger who has chosen to group their blog posts about food into categories named “breakfast”, “lunch”, and “dinner”, all of the content from your blog would be grouped together under the “food” category. If you wanted to promote your brunch cookbook or share an article about the best summer recipes, you would simply tag the content with the keywords “brunch” and “summer” to have the content appear for users searching for that topic.
Tags and categories will make your content easier to discover. This is why it’s important to add them to your blog posts and make sure that all of your content is tagged and categorized appropriately. An easy way to find the right tags and categories for your content is to use the built-in “find similar” feature on your blog’s dashboard. This feature will help you discover content that is similar to the kind you’ve published and will suggest tags and categories to group it under. Similar means that content is of a similar topic and usually contains words or phrases that are similar to the ones in the original piece.
You can also add photos and videos to your blog posts and pages. Just remember that if you add a photo to a post or page’s content, it will be displayed in the exact same way as an image on a web page (this means that when a reader decides to click on it, they will be taken to the website hosting the photo).
To ensure that your readers can always find your content, whether they’re reading it online or on a mobile device, you should add location information to all of your blog posts and pages. This way, whenever someone is searching for a local restaurant, bar, or event, your blog will appear at the top of the search results.