WordPress: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2: Installing WordPress on Your Web Host

Before you create a WordPress website, you need to tick off a few boxes. The first requirement is to set up an account with a web host. In this chapter, you'll learn what you need and how to find a suitable web host (if you don't have one already). Then you'll learn the easy part—how to quickly install a fresh copy of WordPress on your website (or two).

If you don't have a web host account and aren't planning to get one just yet, there is a solution. You can start by putting a copy of WordPress on your home computer. Jump ahead to Chapter 3 to learn how that works, and come back here when you're ready to create a live site on the internet.

Choosing a Web Host

Maybe you already have a web host. If so, congratulations! You can soar right over this section and land at "Preparing For WordPress" (page 17). But if you don't have a web host yet and want to build a WordPress website that other people can see, you have a decision to make: who can you trust to do the job?

Choosing a good web host seems more daunting than it is. Technically, your host needs to meet just two requirements:

• It needs to be able to run PHP (ideally, version 7.3 or greater), the programming language that powers WordPress.
• It needs to recognize MySQL (version 5.6 or greater), which is the database that stores WordPress content.

These days, every web host meets these requirements. In fact, choosing a WordPress-friendly host is hard because so many hosts offer essentially ...