How to use WordPress on your laptop

Some basics first. Beginners use the free, hosted WordPress blogs on www.wordpress.com. The next step up is to self-host your blog by using free software from www.wordpresss.org at a self-hosting service whom you pay around USD10.00 a month. The hoster, such as Dreamhost host a lot of WordPress blogs and will set up the basic shell for you within about 10 minutes.

If you want to be a little bit more ambitious and make or edit your own theme, then you can turn part of your own computer into a self-hosting service. The first step is to download WAMP (assuming you use Windows). WAMP gives you an Apache server, mySQL databases and PHPadmin.

All you do to get everthing running is

Download WAMP into a directory c:/wamp (follow the download instructions)

Set up passwords for root and IP 127… at PHPadmin activated following WAMPserver in Start/All Programs

Use Windows Explorer to go to c:/wamp/apps/PHPadmin and edit your password the config.inc file

$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘auth_type’] = ‘config’;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘user’] = ‘root’;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘password’] = ‘yourpassword’;

Set up a new database ready to receive your wordpress.

Make a new directory under c:/wamp/www and upload an up-to-date version of wordpress from wordpress.org

Edit the config-sample.php file following instructions at wordpress.org

Two important tips to using Wordress on Wamp

When you edit the config.inc file for WAMP save it using the Save As command. Just closing the file updates the text but throuws up an error. Not sure why but i wasted an evening on this.

When you are working with a fresh installation of WAMP, go into into its menu box and make sure the module – rewrite is on. If mod_rewrite is not on, you will not be able to use “pretty” permalinks. Your wordpress will say you are using them but when you try to view the page, you will get an error because wordpress cannot find the page in mySQL even though it is on!

Two time-consuming obstacles that you can avoid!

Migrating from WordPress.com to self-hosted

My overall goal here is to organize my online assets and my specific goal right now is to move my 2 year old blog from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress blog on Dreamhost. Though self-hosting costs a monthly fee and takes more maintenance, self-hosting allows me to control the theme, get Google Analytics and use advertisements.

So far, I have completed these steps

I bought a domain name, jojordan.org
I made a neat frontend for my domain using Posterous and connected it to the domain name that is housed at Dreamhost
I set up a sub-domain on Dreamhost flowingmotion.wordpress.om
I used Dreamhost’s one One Click install to set up WordPress including an admin account
I zipped a theme that I had edited on my local host version of WordPress and tested it on a dummy account

Uploading a theme

Now I am ready to import my own theme to my self-hosted version of WordPress.

I don’t need to login into Dreamhost. I simply go to my browser and type in the address of my blog: http://flowingmotion.jojordan.org/wp-admin and login in as admin (not me).

Now I can go to Appearance in left side bar and Add Theme. I use Upload and Browse to upload the them from my hard drive. Activate. Check. Done!

Setting up permalinks

Now the last task before I come to get the content here is to match the permalink style on my self-hosted blog to the style here. If I don’t do that, then the post titles are going to get scribbled and people won’t be able to follow old links and bookmarks to find the posts. I may as well leave them behind, in other words.

To prep the permalinks, I look at the bottom of the left sidebar, choose Settings/permalinks, and and choose the 2nd option, day and name. Check they are same as usual.

Ready to import content

Now if I am right, I am ready to import content. I will come to my hosted blog, go to dashboard and export all the content to my hard drive. This usually trips up over size and timing. As can never remember what I wrote, I will write it down this time and make post 5 in this series!

But that will be from the new blog! See you on the other side!

Tag: permalinks

Two Important Tips when using WordPress on a local server like WAMP