Now that I have started my blog on wordpress, i am having all sorts of thoughts to customize it. After doing an extensive research y’day i found that i cant customize 😦 ,unless i move my blog to another server.
There are many ways to do this
1> You can you can purchase a plan at a web hosting provider for a few bucks a month. OR
2>You can set it up on your home computer for free.
I dont intend to spend any money on this blog as of now , n moreover it will be fun to setup your own web server.
The cool thing about blogs (and many other web apps, like wikis) is that they don’t actually have to live online.
Lets look at how to set up weblog on your Windows PC using , WordPress in 7 Steps
Step 1: Install WAMP
1 . WAMP is an open source, simple installation package that bundles together Apache, MySQL, and PHP into one tight little Windows package. You can download WAMP here. Go ahead and accept the defaults unless you have a good reason to do otherwise and you know what you’re doing. Once you’ve finished, direct your browser the http://localhost/ and, if everything went smoothly, you should see the WAMP welcome page above.
Step 2: Change your MySQL password and create a new database
To add a password to your MySQL database. You can do this by clicking on the “PHPmyadmin” link on the WAMP homepage under Tools or by going to http://localhost/phpmyadmin/. To change your password, click on the “Privileges” link, then click the edit privileges icon for the user called, “root” (there should be no other users. If for some reason there are and you didn’t put them there, go ahead and delete them. On the “Edit Privileges” page, go to the “Change password” box, then change and save the password.
To continue using PHPmyadmin, we need to update your password in the config file. Open C:\wamp\phpmyadmin\config.inc.php in your favorite text editor (or just Notepad) and change:
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘password’] = ”;
to
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘password’] = ‘yournewpassword’;
Replacing yournewpassword with the password you just created with PHPmyadmin.
Step 3: Create a new database
Go back tohttp://localhost/phpmyadmin/ and enter a name for your database. It can be called whatever you want, but I kept things simple and called mine, “wordpress”. Hit the Create button and that’s all. Simple, huh?
Step 4: Download and extract WordPress
Go ahead and grab the latest WordPress package here. Unzip the package and extract all of its contents to C:\wamp\www. You can either keep the files in the folder called wordpress, in which case your blog’s URL will be localhost/wordpress/, or you can rename the folder if you’d prefer something like localhost/blog. If you want your root directory to bring up your blog, you can just extract all of the files inside the wordpress folder directly to the C:\wamp\www folder.
Step 5: Configure WordPress
Now we need to tell WordPress about your MySQL database. Assuming you installed WordPress in the default wordpress folder, open C:\wamp\www\wordpress\wp-config-sample.php in a text editor and add your database name, your database username (root), and your new password to the top of the file. (You won’t need to change the DB name if you called it wordpress, but you should replace username with root and password with the password you created in step 2. After you’ve edited the settings, save the file as wp-config.php.
Step 6: Install WordPress
Just go tohttp://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php (unless you put WordPress in a different folder in step 4). Continue through the dead-simple, two-step installation, until you’ve completed the installation. WordPress will have generated a new username and password that you’ll use to log in to your weblog’s Admin page. By default, the username is ‘admin’, and the password is a randomly generated string. Copy/write it down.
Step 7: You’re done. Configure and post to your blog
go to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-login.php and log in with the username and password WordPress created during the install (you did remember to write it down, right?). The first thing I’d do is change the admin password to something more memorable. To do that, log in and click on the Users tab, where you can add your personal info and change your password. Easy-peasy.
Congratulations, you’ve got your own, personal, locally hosted blog.Now that you’ve got WordPress installed on your local computer, you’ve got a lot of options. If you want to make your blog accessible to the outside world,you need to assign a domain name to your home web server like yourname.com – for an easy-to-remember, bookmarkable, professional web address.
Keep in mind that you wouldn’t be able to run a heavily trafficked blog from your home computer, but if it’s just a personal blog for friends and family, hosting it yourself is definitely an option.
How to assign a domain name to your webserver?
A dynamic DNS service is a constantly updated database of IP addresses and domain names. DynDNS.com is one provider of this service. For free, you can get one of the available DynDNS domain names plus a custom subdomain (like xyz.getmyip.net), or for a small fee you can register your own domain (like ashishjagani.com) and have it resolve to your home computer web server with DynDNS.
- Register for a free account at DynDNS. Agree to the site’s terms, and use a legitimate email address to complete registration. Once in awhile, DynDNS will email you at that address asking you to confirm that it continue your service.
- Log into your new account. Go to the “My Services” area on the left side. Under “Host Level Services” click “Add Host Services.” There, click “Add Dynamic DNS Host.” DynDNS will autofill your IP address (if you’re doing this from your home computer). Choose a domain and type in a custom subdomain, which can be anything from ajfundaes.myblog.org or ashish.is-a-geek.com or aj.dyndns.org.
- Now that your computer is registered with DynDNS, each time your computer’s IP address changes, it has to let DynDNS know. This can be done either with free updater client software or through your router. If your computer is connected directly to the Internet, download the DynDNS updater client for Mac or Windows here. Install and enter your DynDNS information so that your computer can update DynDNS’s database regularly
You’re done. Give your new domain a spin!
Type your new domain name by entering it in your web browser’s address bar. It should resolve to your home server. From here you can publicize or bookmark your server’s new domain name no matter how often your IP address changes.
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