WordPress installation tweaks
Posted by: Jowan Dijkhuis on: November 5, 2006
This post is a short text version of the WordPress installation tutorial by Rachel Cunliffe.
The original video (SWF) can take a while to download so I made this text version.
Please visit Rachel Cunliffe’s blog (links below) if you have any problems with your installation.
Famous 5-Minute Install
1. Go to : http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Famous_5-Minute_Install
2. Follow the six-step tutorial to do a basic WordPress installation.
Changing permissions
1.Create a new file “htaccess” in the root of your wordpress installation folder.
2.Upload your wordpress installation folder to your webserver.
3. Rename “htaccess” to “.htaccess”.
4. Right click on it and Select Properties (SmartFTP) or File Attributes (FileZilla).
5. Make sure that the permissions Read and Write are checked (User, Group and Others – SmartFTP) or in FileZilla (Owner permissions, Group permissions and public permissions). This makes Worpress update the htaccess file as necessary.
6. Change permissions on the folder “wp-content”. Make sure that all Read, Write and Execute boxes are checked. Uncheck any other box.
This might be usefull later on if you want to upload files to WordPress.
7. Navigate to your WordPress themes folder. (/wp-content/themes/default)
8. Make all files (not folders) writeable. So Read and Write checkboxes should be checked. After this you are allowed to change these files within WordPress. You might for instance change the layout of your blog.
9. Now go back to your WordPress root.
10. Open your browser and go to your blog homepage.
11. You might see an installation screen (install.php). Follow the steps if necessary or if you have installed Worpress before log in to your blogs admin page (/wp-login.php/)
Change default password
1.Go to “Users” tab.
2. Fill in the a new password under “Update Your Password”.
3.Click the button “Update profile”.
Customize Permalink Structure
1. Go to the “Options” tab.
2. The default directory structure for blog posts (http://www.yourblog.com/?p=1) is not very user friendly so we will change that.
3. Select the tab “Permalink” in sub menu of “Options”.
4. Under “Common options” select “Date and name based”. Click the button “Update Permalink Structure” to update your blog post path structure.
Because we have added an .htaccess file and changed permissions for Worpress to write to this file we don’t have to do anything else.
5. Now when you go to a blog post and select “Permalink” or click on the header of a post. Your browser will show a single post. But now with a new directory structure. Something similar to (http://www.yourblog.com/2006/11/05/post-title/)
If you want to you can customize your blog setup by changing other options.
Remember that these are just a few basic installation tweaks. For a video tutorial with a detailed explanation of the steps above visit:
Rachel Cunliff’s blog:
Short version:
How to install WordPress 2.0 – http://www.cre8d-design.com/blog/2006/01/19/how-to-install-wordpress-20/
Long version:
http://ia311507.us.archive.org/0/items/RachelCunliffeWordPressTutorial1_0/WordPress1.sw
Improving directory listing on your Apache 2.2.3 server
Posted by: Jowan Dijkhuis on: August 8, 2006
When you browse a directory on a server with an old Apache version installed. Your directory will show up like this (or similar):
It will auto-index your directories something similar to your file browser on your computer . As a user you can click on directory link, file link and you can sort a column by name, date, filesize, etc. It’s a feature most people see when browsing a web server.
Recently I installed a new version of Apache. You can download the newest version here. Currently Apache 2.2.3 is the best available version.
After installation directories on your server will show up like this:
I didn’t like this ‘new’ way of showing directories on my server. So I did some research on this subject. I found no decent explanation or examples on the web. As a ‘professional’ Apache Server administrator I know I can configure my server with the httpd.conf file.
To change your server configuration to get a better directory listing follow these steps:
- Open httpd.conf (Windows: “C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf”) in your text editor.
- Search for: Include conf/extra/httpd-autoindex.conf
- Remove ‘#’ in front of ‘Include conf/extra/httpd-autoindex.conf’.
- Save your configuration file and restart your Apache server.
- Navigate to a webser directory that has no index.htm(l) or index.php in its folder. By default the server will autoindex files and folders as you might know.
- Now your directories will look like this:
Fancy huh? Well at least it’s better than the default.
If you’d like to know more about changing/customizing your Apache server directory listing google for ‘Fancy Indexing’.
To get you started: Devpit – Stripped and Tweaked httpd.conf
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