Category "Wordpress"

The latest version of WordPress, 3.3, was released earlier today and has been called “Sonny” in honour of the jazz master, Sonny Stitt. It is ready for download on the WordPress website, or within your WordPress dashboard (We ourselves have a ton of websites to go through and update this week!).

WordPress 3.3 “Sonny” – New Features

There are some incredible improvements on the latest release. Here are just some of the main new features:

WordPress 3.3 now has a much better user experience within the WordPress dashboard
It has a revamped “Welcome Screen” with a basic overview and some tips getting started
It has ‘Feature Pointers’ which are basically tool-tips that point out new features
An improved contextual help with a breakdown of all features for the current page you’re on to quickly solve problems.
New dashboard menu no longer works like an accordion, but rather a drop-out menu (yay)
Dashboard header and admin bar have been combined into the new “Toolbar” found across the top of the dashboard

Drag-and-Drop Upload: This is my favourite update so far – The image, audio and media uploaders have been combined into one button, and the uploader now supports Drag-and-Drop. You can drop multiple file types at once, and it will upload them all together.
Finally, they’ve improved the touch support on the iPad and other tablets
All in all, a very exciting release! I’ve updated already and am enjoying exploring the new dashboard. Have you updated yet?

This post will give you step-by-step instructions for setting up WordPress on a domain you own (as opposed to a free domain hosted with WordPress). Previously, I wrote an article on how to install WordPress with websites with cPanel.

In this article, I will be showing you how to install WordPress on other servers that don’t have cPanel (This method works for ALL websites, using cPanel is just easier in some cases).

You need a basic understanding and access to the following for this tutorial:

A hosted website with at least one free database
FTP Access
Domain support (if your client owns the domain, make sure you are a technical support contact on their domain)
Step 1: Download & Upload WordPress

Download the latest version of WordPress from wordpress.org. Upload the contents of the ‘wordpress’ folder to your server via FTP. Once you’re done, your FTP should look something like this:

WordPress via FTP

Step 2: Setting up an empty Database

I am by no means an expert with databases, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t understand why or what these are for. All you need to know is that WordPress requires one to work.

The easiest way to set one up is to ask your hosting company! Email or phone your website hosting provider, let them know you are setting up WordPress and ask them to create an empty database for you. They will then send you the following details:

• Database name
• Database username
• Database password
• Database host (IF applicable – most servers don’t require this)

Step 3: Run the WordPres Install

Double check you have uploaded your WordPress files correctly, make sure you have the database details on hand and visit your website. WordPress should prompt you to create a config file. Click ‘Create a Configuration File’ and enter all the database details as required.

WordPress – Database Install

If everything is entered correctly, you will be presented with the ‘Welcome’ screen from WordPress.

Congrats! You have successfully installed WordPress! Now pat yourself on the back and enjoy your new WordPress website.

If you’re still struggling to install WordPress or simply don’t have the time to set it up yourself, I will be happy to assist you. You can email me here for my costing.

In 2009, I wrote an article on my blog called “How to Protect your WordPress Website“. It provided instructions to help make your WordPress site a little less ‘hackable’. Unfortunately, hackers are smarter and more and more WordPress websites are being compromised. Here are some old tricks that still apply, as well as some new ones