How To Manually Set Up WordPress On a Domain

If you already have your own domain name set up, setting up a WordPress site on it is very easy. However, there are a few things you need to prepare before you can set up your WordPress site and start using it.

This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about preparing your domain and web hosting account to install WordPress, how to complete the installation, and finally, how to start using your new WordPress website.

Set up your domain

You can purchase a domain from any domain provider you like, no matter which web hosting provider you choose. The only important setting you need to worry about when setting up WordPress on a domain is that the nameservers for your domain point to the correct web hosting account.

This is the first thing you will need to configure. To do this, log into your web hosting account and go to cPanel. Often, the two name servers for this web hosting account are listed in the left pane under Statistics. It is sometimes also called DNS servers.

If it’s not there, browse any other account information pages provided by your web host to find those servers.

Once you’ve got them, log into your domain provider account and find your registered domain. In your domain settings, you can find where the nameservers are defined.

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Modify the domains listed to match the two nameservers that you recorded from your hosting account.

This will direct all incoming traffic to that web domain to the correct web server where you are going to set up your WordPress website.

Set up your hosting account

Now that all web traffic going to your domain is directed to the correct hosting account, you also need to configure that domain in your hosting account.

This means that you either need to create a new hosting account based on that domain name (configured during the hosting account registration). Or, if you already have a hosting account, you can add new domains to it.

To do this, log into your hosting account and log back into cPanel. Under Domains, select Additional Domains.

In this section, fill in the details related to the domain name that you want to set up on your web host.

This data includes the domain name, subdomain (usually the same as a domain without the “.com” at the end), a subfolder that will store all your WordPress files, and a strong password.

Note. Additional domains only work if your web host has enabled this feature to host multiple domains on the same hosting account. If you only use one domain for your web hosting account, you don’t need to worry about adding an additional domain.

Test for name server changes

Now that you’ve configured your domain provider to direct all requests for your domain to a web hosting account, and you’ve configured a web hosting account for your web file server from a specific folder, it’s time to test if these changes work.

Login to your web hosting account, open cPanel. In the “Files” section, select “File Manager”.

To open the directory, select the document root for the domain you just configured. Select Go.

You will see that this directory is currently completely empty. To test that the site is working correctly, you will create a test HTML file with just one line.

To do this, select “New File” in the top menu.

Name the new file index.htm. Click the Create New File button. You will now see a new index.htm file in the root folder of this domain. Index.htm is the default web page that people land on when they first visit a website.

Right-click the file and select Modify to start editing the file.

You don’t need to do anything special for this file to appear in the browser when visitors visit your site. All you have to do is enter one line.

This website is currently working correctly.

When you’re done, click the Save button. Then click the Close button.

Finally, to test that everything is working correctly, open a web browser and enter a new domain in the browser URL field.

You should see this single line you created inside the browser.

Note. If you see a security error when you try to connect to your domain using a browser, you may need to enable SSL for that secondary domain. In this case, contact your web host’s technical support to find out how to enable an additional SSL domain.

Copy WordPress files

Now that you know that your new domain is working correctly and is reading the files in the web host root folder for that domain, you are ready to install WordPress.

To make sure you are installing the latest version of WordPress, visit WordPress.org
and download the latest version. Finally, unzip the downloaded file to your WordPress directory on your computer.

Then open an FTP client on your computer and connect to your web hosting account using the FTP credentials provided by your web hosting provider. Delete the index.htm file that you created earlier and copy all the content from that WordPress directory to the root directory that you created for your secondary domain on your web host account.

Set up a MySQL database

Before you can install WordPress, you need to create a MySQL database for it. This is much easier than it sounds.

• Login to your web hosting account and open cPanel.
• Scroll down to the Databases section and select MySQL Databases.
• In the “Create a New Database” section, enter the name of the new database to install WordPress on your new domain. Then select “Create Database”.

Next, create an admin account to install WordPress. To do this, scroll down to the MySQL Users section and enter the username and password for the account.

Then bind this user to the new database. Scroll down to the Add User to Database section. Select the user you just created, select the database you just created and click the Add button.

On the next screen, you will see a window for applying all the necessary privileges to the user. Select “All Rights” and then select “Make Changes.”

Now your SQL database and admin user are ready to go through the WordPress installation procedure.

Create the WP-Config.php file

The last step before starting the WordPress installation procedure is setting up the wp-config.php file. This file will be located in the root folder of your site; the same location where you previously copied the entire WordPress file.

• Log in to your web hosting account and open the file manager as you did in the previous step.
• Go to the folder for your new domain, right-click on the wp-config-sample.php file and select Modify.

In this file, you will see a section that defines information about the database.

Replace the uppercase text within single quotes with the following information for all items that you created when adding a new MySQL database in the step above:

• Database name: Replace database_name_here.
• Database User: Replace username_here.
• Database Password: Replace password_here.

You can leave the DB_HOST parameter as localhost.

• When finished, click the Save button and then the Close button.
• Finally, rename the file in wp-config-sample.php as wp-config.php.

You are now ready to start installing WordPress!

Install WordPress

Now that all of your WordPress files are in the root directory of your website, all you need to do to start your WordPress installation is open your web browser and visit that domain. If you’ve configured everything correctly, you should see the following window.

This means that the WordPress installation is running and you are in the first step. Select the language you want and click “Continue”.

On the next screen, you will need to define a title for your new website, and an account name and password for the website administrator. Add your email address in the “Your Email Address” field. Select “Install WordPress”.

If everything is working correctly, you should see a message that the WordPress installation was successful.

Next steps

Now when you go to your domain in a web browser, you will see that your new website is displayed using the basic WordPress theme.

The WordPress installation may be complete at this point, but most people are not completely happy with the look and feel of the default WordPress theme.

There are several important things you can do to immediately improve the look and feel of your new WordPress website.

• Upload the WordPress theme to the wp-content / themes folder and install it to the Appearance / Themes Page folder in the WordPress dashboard.
• Visit the plugins page in your WordPress dashboard and install important plugins such as SEO, forms and other plugins that will improve the functionality of your site (many themes come with plugins).
• Add About Us and Contact Us pages to make your site look professional.

Of course, the most important next step when you have a new WordPress website and it’s ready to go is to start creating fantastic content that your visitors will love.

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