Setting up a WordPress database with Earthink hosting
March 23, 2012 8:51 AM   Subscribe

This is a pretty basic question about WordPress & Earthlink hosting. I need advice about installing WP through Earthlink's installer in the control panel.

Background: I'm a graphic designer that does mostly print & photo editing for photographers. I have created basic websites in Dreamweaver, and I'm not completely ignorant when it comes to understanding web design, but as for the development/hosting side of things, I'm not too savvy.

I'm working on putting together a basic website for a client who's site is currently hosted on Earthlink (that won't change). The client and I have decided that for the newly designed site, we will use WordPress. I'll be creating a brand new site with WordPress and replacing the existing site files when the new WordPress site is finished and we're ready to make the transition.

My question is this:
In the Earthlink Control Panel, there's an option to install WordPress. How to I go about doing that in order to select a Database to manage and to create an Installation Directory for WordPress? I'm clueless when it comes to all that. Any advice on how to set up my folders within Earthlink would be greatly appreciated. I know it's pretty basic web developer stuff, but that just ain't my bag. Thanks so much, great minds of Metafilter!
posted by anonymous to Computers & Internet (2 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
You have your work cut out for you, installing and maintaining WordPress on Earthlink is by all accounts kind of a nightmare. I did some poking around support forums and found no documentation specifically about the steps you have to go through to install, but on this page there is a link at the bottom to initiate a live chat session with Earthlink support and that may be the way to go for you.
posted by Kimberly at 10:38 AM on March 23, 2012


If you are doing a rather basic site have you given any thought to doing the site at Wordpress.com and redirecting the domain name from Earthlink?

Can you ftp files to the Earthlink account and do a manual install? Usually, if you install with the web control panel option you are stuck waiting for it when there are security patches and upgrades. They tend to not be quick on those. I always do a clean manual install with Wordpress.

If you can, the process is roughly...

1. Create database and database user. Should be a point and click operation in the web control panel.
2. Download Wordpress, extract, upload Wordpress folder to Earthlink.
3. Edit config file with database info. (db name, user name, password)
4. Point browser at install script per instructions and go.

The install process is well documented at Wordpress.org.
posted by COD at 11:16 AM on March 23, 2012


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