The fast way – Fantastico or Softaculous and other control panels

Both Cpanel and Plesk have application installers in them. The cPanel installer is called Fantastico or Softaculous. The Plesk installer is called Application Installer.

Both of these control panels offer a range of software that can be selected and installed. E.g. Moodle, dotProject, dropal, joomla… and then many other lesser scripts and software for things like newsletters, guest books and so on.

The installers are capable of creating a database, setting up permissions on folders and generally involve a wizard to complete the core installation.

There is a third control panel called Helm which is now an asset of Parallels corporation and so will be subsumed and replaced by Plesk.

The slow way – there is no slow way

The slow way is not particularly time consuming. It involves downloading the core WordPress install files, unzipping them, editing three lines in a configuration file and uploading the lot to the web server. Concurrent to this process an empty MSQL Database is created in the control panel. The longest part of this process is waiting for the files to upload. Once these tasks are complete, simple key mydomain.co.nz/wp-admin/index.php to complete the admin user set up (where “mydomain” is your domain).

With a working WordPress installation at your finger tips its time to select a design or “theme”, add your favourite plugins, spend less time in front of your computer and live a better life.

Uses

• Brochureware – the web 1.01, putting the companies brochure online.
• Blogging, with or without commentary. Establish a following. Build an audience. Ask them to interact with your articles and outlooks.
• Ecommerce, do the complete product catelogue, shopping cart and payment processing. Control it all in the backend without leaving WordPress
• Galleries, for photographers or to display bulk product images.
• Real Estate, build fully featured real estate web sites with image galleries
• Directory sites, used to create Google Adsense revenue
• Staff manual, detail information that all staff need, create a library of PDF forms for download. Hide it behind passwords or logins
• Procedures manual, document business procedures and create check lists so staff have a constant reference.show them, tell them, but them point them at the procedures manual.

Root or subdirectory?

Unless just being used purely as a blog, WordPress should be probably handle the whole site. This gives the owner the option to edit everything.