Are you excited about installing wordPress to create your dream website? Whether it is your first time or your twelfth time setting up WordPress, understanding how it is installed and set up is a valuable skill that every beginner or experienced user should possess.
WordPress is an open-source project whose software can be freely downloaded for personal servers or computers. While many hosting companies now automatically install it for users, you can download and install it yourself for maximum control and peace of mind.
WordPress has long been used on various websites. Here we outline how you can install it at no cost and provide instructions for doing so successfully.
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Why you should use WordPress for your website
According to wpbeginner report, over 43% of websites on the internet use WordPress. Its flexibility, ease of use and extensive customization options make it an excellent choice for bloggers, businesses and developers alike. By understanding its core concepts, you’ll soon be well on your way to building an engaging online presence that draws visitors in!
It provides numerous advantages, including access to a vast library of plugins and themes as well as an active community. Furthermore, its free usage makes it highly customizable and SEO friendly – making it the ideal platform for anyone attempting to build their website.
Why Is WordPress Free to download & use
There’s a core team of developers tasked with overseeing the development of this project; however, anyone is welcome to make contributions of any sort; patching code, fixing bugs or suggesting improvements can all help contribute significantly to its growth and evolution.
Although WordPress itself is free, creating a website using it does require expenses and costs that vary based on your budget and goals; nonetheless, creating one should remain relatively cost-effective.
The main expenses to consider will include purchasing and hosting your domain (i.e. the address for your website on the internet), as well as an appropriate plan that stores files and databases of your website.
The good news is that most web hosting companies will automatically install WordPress for you – no manual install.
However, advanced and intermediate users have the option of manually installing WordPress. This can be especially useful if you wish to customize an individual installation or have WordPress on a server or personal computer.
Now let’s examine how you can download WordPress for free. In this guide we will cover:
- How to download WordPress for free
- How to manually install WordPress or Reinstall WordPress on a Web Server
- How to install WordPress locally on your computer
How to Download WordPress for Free
First, you start by going to the download page WordPress.org. There are two options.
- You can download WordPress and install it yourself
- You can set up WordPress automatically with a hosting provider.
We advise users to go with a second option for installing WordPress because trusted hosting providers like Hostinger, Bluehost, DreamHost, SiteGround and more. They can set it up automatically within five minutes.
However, if you are an intermediate or advanced user and wish to download WordPress manually, click on the “Download WordPress button“.
The download button also provides information on which version of WordPress you are downloading; make sure to download the latest version.
Once your files have been downloaded from WordPress.org, you must extract them. This will create a “wordpress” folder which contains all of the files necessary for setting up a WordPress website.
Now that you have all the necessary files to download WordPress for free, you can use it to install WordPress or reinstall WordPress on your server or you can download local WordPress on your computer.
How to manually install WordPress or Reinstall WordPress on a Web Server
Installing WordPress manually takes a few additional steps however, it’s not as difficult as you imagine. You’ll need the downloaded files and the FTP client or Web-based File Manager.
You can use the same method to update your WordPress, or reinstall and installing WordPress.
Uploading the WordPress files to your web server
The first step is to connect your website with FTP to transfer the WordPress files you downloaded to your computer to your website server. You can consider FTP as a file management system for the internet.
The majority of web hosting providers provide the FTP server. They will send you your FTP username along with password and other details by email after you sign up to get a WordPress hosting service. You will also find your FTP Accounts information within your host’s control panel, cPanel, or the site tools dashboard.
In addition to FTP, most hosting providers offer a browser-based file manager, which is accessible from your web hosting control panel.
FileZilla is a free FTP client that works on Windows, Macs, and Linux systems.
Open FileZilla and select File » Site Manager from the menu. Next, click the ‘New site‘ button and enter a title for your website. Next, enter the login information in the ‘User’ and ‘Password’ fields.
If your hosting provider supports SFTP, select it from the Protocol dropdown. Otherwise, leave it as FTP.
Enter your domain name, such as ‘simpleyaar.com’, in the Host field and select ‘Normal’ for the Logon Type.
Upon entering these details, click the ‘Connect’ button to continue. FileZilla will now attempt to log in to your website.
You will see two columns of files and folders. On the left column are Local files on your computer. On the right column are remote files on your website.
In the left column, you need to find the ‘wordpress’ folder that you downloaded and unzipped earlier. In the right column, you need to find the folder on your website where the files should be uploaded:
- You can install WordPress on your root domain name (like simpleyaar.com) by uploading WordPress files to your website’s root directory usually /public_html/.
- In contrast, if you’d like for you to put WordPress in an additional directory (like simpleyaar.com/blog), then place it in a folder called /public_html/blogand.
After that, you simply need to right-click on left column files and select ‘Upload’ from the menu, or drag the files to the right column.
The WordPress files will now be uploaded to your website via your FTP client.
The WordPress Database Creation Process
You need to create a new database in your hosting control panel after uploading the WordPress files.
In this blog tutorial, I’ll show you how to use cPanel, but if your hosting provider has a different control panel, just look for ‘phpMyAdmin’.
In the phpMyAdmin dashboard, click the ‘Databases’ tab.
Now type your database name in the “database name” field. You can select any name you want, but make sure to make a note of the name you choose as it requires it later on.
For this tutorial, I will call my database “test_sy”.
Click the ‘Create’ button after typing your database name. Your database will now be created by phpMyAdmin.
Now you’re ready to install WordPress.
WordPress installation
To start installing, go to your website’s URL, such as simpleyaar.com, to open the WordPress installation wizard.
You will see the language selection page here. You can choose a language here so that the rest of the installation is displayed in your language. Alternatively, you can use English for now but later change it or add multiple languages.
To continue, click the ‘Continue’ button.
Now you will see instructions about the installation process. You will see a list of information required including the database name, username, password, and host.
Click the ‘Let’s go!’ button to continue. The setup wizard will now display a form where you can enter the database information you created earlier.
Make sure you leave the Database Host field as ‘localhost’ which is already as default. This shows that the database and website are hosted on the same server. Unless you changed the database prefix, the table prefix field should say wp_.
Upon filling out this form, click the ‘Submit’ button. WordPress will connect to your database and show you a success message.
for the final step click on ‘Run the installation’ button, WordPress will create tables in your database and then send you to the next step.
Additional information will be requested on the next screen.
Your WordPress dashboard allows you to change the site title you wish to display at the top of your website, such as your business name.
To access your WordPress dashboard, you’ll need to create a username and password.
In your email field, you can type your email address. WordPress will send all admin emails to this address.
You can check the box next to search engine visibility if you don’t want your website to be visible to search engines.
In the future, you can change this from WordPress settings. If you are unsure, leave it unchecked.
Click on ‘Install WordPress’ button to begin the installation process. WordPress will now run the installation, and you will see a ‘success!’ message shortly thereafter.
Click on the ‘Log In’ button to access your WordPress dashboard.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed WordPress manually by downloading the core software for free.
How to install WordPress locally on your computer
You can also utilize the WordPress core files you downloaded to set up WordPress on your personal computer. This allows you to test WordPress before launching your blog or website, providing a risk-free environment to explore themes and plugins.
Please note: Installing WordPress locally means only you will have access to it.
To successfully run WordPress on your computer, you’ll first need to install the necessary software it depends on: the PHP server-side programming language, the Apache web server, and the MySQL database management system.
Setting up and configuring each of these software components individually may seem daunting. Fortunately, there are free development tools available that simplify this process by bundling them into a single installation package, even for users without technical expertise. Once you have one of these applications installed, you can proceed with installing WordPress using a method similar to the steps outlined above.
We recommend using Local WP for installing WordPress on your computer. Here are detailed tutorials on how to install WordPress on Windows and how to install WordPress on Mac.
Please note: With Local WP, there’s no need to manually download and install WordPress on your computer. It handles the process with just a few clicks.