Inveigled By Design

I set out to get WordPress running on a 1and1 shared server today and, given that you’re reading this, you probably guessed that I succeeded. It was actually pretty easy.

Note: My system at home is running windows Vista and I’m using the linux hosting package on a 1and1 shared server. If you’re using a different operating system or host you may need different tools,but the process is likely similar.

First, you’ll need a few tools:

1. An FTP client. I use FileZilla, it’s free and it works well.
2. You should also take a look at the Wordpress security whitepaper. Many of the suggestions for keeping your installation secure are easier if you do them upfront.
3. You can always refer to the WordPress installation instructions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Famous_5-Minute_Install for more details on WordPress installation.

This may seem like alot, but the steps are quite easy. If you mess something up, you can delete the installation and start over. Here are the steps you need to take:

• Set up a database on the 1and1 servers
• Get your server login information from 1and1
• Download and configure WordPress
• Upload WordPress to the 1and1 servers.
• Set WordPress up using their “5 minute install”.
• Change your admin user name to make your installation more secure.

Set up a database on the 1and1 servers:

WordPress stores its information in a database, and works quite nicely with the My Sql installation that 1and1 provides.

1. Log in to the 1and1 control panel (admin page) for your account. They should have sent you information on how to access this page when you signed up with them.
2. Look for the section of the page called “Web Space Access” and click on the My Sql Administration link. Click on “New Database” and enter something you’ll recognize for a description like “blogDatabase” and click the MySql 5.0 option. When you’ve entered your description, choose “Set Up”. You’ll be taken back to the My Sql adiministration page and your new database will appear in the list of your databases. It may take 10 minutes or so for the database to be fully configured, but you can proceed with these steps while you’re waiting.
3. Find the database you just created in the list of your databases and click on the “Edit” button to the far right of its name in the list. You’ll need the information displayed here to configure WordPress, so either write down the information about the database or, better yet, select it and copy and paste it into a Notepad or Word document.

Get your server login information from 1and1:

To install WordPress on the server, you’ll need information on how to access your account via FTP or SSH. SSH is more secure, but FTP will work just as well for this purpose.

1. In the Web Space & Access section of the control panel, click on the “Secure Shell (SSH) Access” or “FTP Account” link. Write down or copy and paste the username and password 1and1 has supplied for your upload access.

Download and configure WordPress:

Installing WordPress is quite easy, but you’ll need to configure a few things first.

1. Create a folder to download the wordpress files into.  Download the latest WordPress zip file from http://wordpress.org/ and save it to the folder you just created. Double-click on the zip file and unzip the contents. There should be a WordPress folder inside.
2. Inside the WordPress folder you should see a file called wp-config-sample.php. This file contains the settings that tell WordPress about your database. Rename this file to wp-config.php and then open it up in Notepad. Using the information you saved when you created your blog database, fill in the following fields, remembering to preserve the single quotes around the entries:
   DB_NAME (corresponds to databaseName),
   DB_USER(corresponds touserName),
   DB_PASSWORD(corresponds to Password),
   DB_HOST(corresponds to hostName).
3. Now go to: http://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/. 
   Each time you access this page, it generates a unique set of keys that help keep your installation more secure. You’ll see four lines starting with “define(’AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);” that
   correspond to the lines in wp-config.php. Copy the lines from the web page over the matching lines in wp-config.php.
4. Go to the line in wp-config.php that starts with $table-prefix, where the default entry is “wp_”. Change this to something a little more obscure like “3rw6_”, but make up your own letter/number combo. Details on this are in the security whitepaper mentioned at the top of this article. Now you’re done configuring the WordPress entries, so save your changes to the wp-config.php file.

Upload WordPress to the 1and1 servers:

1. Once WordPress is configured, open up FileZilla and click on File-> Site Manager and then “New Site”. For host enter your domain name: “www.yourdomain.com”. For ServerType, choose SFTP – SSH File Transfer Protocol (or FTP if you opted to get the FTP username and password above). For Logontype choose “Normal”. For username and password, enter the SSH (or FTP) settings you copied from the 1and1 admin panel. Now click “OK”. Now FileZilla should be able to connect to your site. Under the server menu, choose “Connect”.
2. FileZilla shows you the folders on your home computer in the left side pane and the folders and files on the 1and1 server in the right hand pane. In the right-hand pane, you should be looking at the main folder for your account on 1and1. If you have a folder for your domain set up already, double-click on it so you see the files it contains. I like to create my blog in its own folder underneath the domain, so right click in the right-side pane and choose Create Directory. Create a folder called “blog” and double-click to open it up.
3. Now on the left side of FileZilla, navigate to the folder where you expanded the WordPress files in step 4. You should be inside the “WordPress” folder so that you see the wp-config.php file and all of the others. Now select all of the files in the folder, right-click and choose “Upload”. FileZilla will copy the WordPress files to your blog folder on the server.

Set WordPress up using their “5 minute install”:

1. If you put the WordPress files into the “blog” folder underneath your main domain folder, you can run the install script from http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php.
2. Enter a name for your blog and your e-mail address. WordPress will use the e-mail address to communicate with you about comments and other information. Select whether you want Google and other
   search engines to have access to your blog and then click “Install WordPress”.
3. When WordPress is installed, you’ll see a page showing the admin password that was generated for you. Copy the admin password and then choose “Log In”. You’ll be able to log in using the username
   “admin” and the password you just copied.

Change your admin user name to make your installation more secure:

This step is technically not required to install WordPress, but does help make your installation more secure.

1. Log back in to the 1and1 admin page and choose the “My Sql Administration” link under the “Web Space Access” section.
2. Find your blog database in the list of databases on your site and click the “phpMyAdmin” button to the right of the database entry.
3. On the far left of the page, you’ll see a list of tables that WordPress has created. They’ll all start with the prefix you choose to enter into the wp-config.php file above. Click on the one that has the name prefix_users (where prefix = your prefix).
4. About half way down the page you’ll see a section called “Run SQL query/querieson database … “. Click on the “Go” button at the bottom of that section.  Now you’re looking at a list of all of the users in your WordPress installation.
5. Click on the icon to the left of the entry with user_login “admin” that looks like a pencil (and has the word “Edit” for a tooltip). In the Value column of the user_login entry, change admin to something else and write your entry down in a safe place. Click the “Go” button and then close the phpMyAdmin page and logout of your 1and1 account. Now whenever you want to login to WordPress as an admin, you’ll need to use the new username you just created.

Now you have WordPress ready to go and you can start sharing your thoughts with the rest of us …