It’s easy to get up and running with your first WordPress installation. Have a look at our video tutorial or read through this post for a step-by-step guide on getting up and running.
How to Install WordPress
Once you’ve been set up with a Colgate Domains account, you’ll be able to install a number of different applications to help you create a website or repository online. WordPress is just one example, but it’s the most popular content management system on the web today, so it’s a great choice if this is your first website.
Step 1: Launch the Installer
In cPanel, under the applications section, click on WordPress. This will launch the application installer where you can read about what WordPress is and decide if it’s the right content management system for you.
Once you’re ready to go, click Install this application on the right:
Step 2: Choosing the settings
You’ll now be taken to a settings configuration page. Here you can choose where you want to install this instance of WordPress.
If this is your first site, you’ll likely want to install WordPress on the root directory (directly on your Colgate Domains subdomain, such as student.colgate.domains). If you’ve already installed WordPress on your account and created a site, you should enter something in the Directory field to create a new instance of WordPress (e.g. student.colgate.domains/blog) otherwise, you’ll be overwriting your existing WordPress site.
So, if it’s your first site, just leave the Directory field blank.
After that, you can leave the default settings as they are, which will keep your WordPress site up to date and create backups automatically.
You can leave the account name and password as they are, as you’ll only ever need to use your university login credentials to access your cPanel and WordPress dashboard through colgate.domains.
Then, just give your blog/website a name and description.
Leave the Limit Login Attempts and Multisite defaults as they are for this installation.
Under Advanced, select Let me manage these settings.
Leave the settings for Database Management, Default Backup Location and Automatic Backup as is (note: our host provider backs up all accounts everyday). The only settings to change here under Email Notification. Select none to turn off email notifications.
Keep scrolling to the bottom and click Install.
That’s it! I’ve successfully installed WordPress!
Launching WordPress
You’ve now got a WordPress installation up and running. Anytime you want to work on your site, just log into your cPanel dashboard through the Colgate Domains website. Under Web Applications you’ll see your WordPress site. Clicking on that brings you to this screen, and the middle link (ending in /wp-admin/) opens up your WordPress dashboard where you can edit your site.
*This post was derived from the Coventry.Domains Support Documentation under CC BY-NC 4.0.
