As part of the course requirement, your group will install, configure, and populate a content managed site using WordPress. The following are the steps to follow using the accounts I host for you. Although the general steps will be the same on any host, the details and the interface may be somewhat different.

1. Login to your domain control panel. You need to point your browser to:

   https://yourdomain.ext:8443

   Not the “s” at the end of http and the trailing :8443

2. You may receive a warning about the certificate not matching the site, ignore that and continue to the site
3. For login ID enter your full domain name, for password use the password I sent to you when I set up your hosting account. You will find yourself at the domain “desktop”
4. Click on “Home” on top of the left column, this will take you to the actual control panel. You should see the following (click to enlarge)
   
5. You need to create a MySQL database, so click on the “Databases” icon, then on the following screen “Add new database”
6. The system will suggest a DB name, enter your own, don’t make it too short; write down the name that you chose on a piece of paper, you will need that. Make sure that you select from the drop down menu MySQL for the type. Then click on OK to create the DB
7. Now you need to add a DB user for this database with a password. Click on “Add New Database User”. You will need to enter the DB user name and password. Make sure they are not easy to guess or too short, you will not need to remember them after the installation. Enter the values into the fields and write them down as you will need them
8. Now, go to http://www.wordpress.org and download the application, it most recent version is 2.7 and you will see a link to download it on the front page. Save the file to a known location on your local computer
9. Using a ZIP utility, like WinZIP or ZIP Genius, extract the contents of the ZIP file making sure that you create the embedded directory names and contents
10. Locate the wp-config.php file and edit it to reflect the DB name, DB user name, and DB password. There are a couple of other fields that ask you to enter an arbitrary phrase; don’t overlook them.
11. Using your FTP client, login to your hosting account, change to httpdocs directory, and create a new directory called blog which will be the location of your WordPress installation. Note that there are no uppercase letters in the directory name.
12. After creating the directory, double click on its name to open it; then upload the contents of the WordPress extracted files into it
13. You are almost done, now point your browser to:
    http://www.yourdomain.ext/blog/wp-admin/install.php  and you will see the following screen:
    
14. Enter a blog name, you can change it later, and enter a working email address. Click on Install WordPress.
15. WordPress will complete the installation and give you a very cryptic password. Select the password (double-click on it with your mouse) and copy it (Ctrl-C)
16. Click on “Login” and enter admin for user name, paste the password you copied and login. Do not put a check mark in “Remember …”
17. As soon as you login, click on the admin name on the top right corner to edit user information. Scroll down to the end of the page to see “New Password fields, you will need to enter it twice. Enter a password you will remember. Click on Update Profile button
18. Look for the Users on the tool bar on the left, click on it to expand its menu choices. Click on Add New and add a new user. Set this user’s role to “Administrator” as well. You may do the same for all the group members. Make sure you have a division of labor and do not perform the same maintenance functions at the same time.
19. Congratulations, you now have a working WordPress installation

We will then tweak it to do more than the basic installation provides.