[alphaBETA]

Hi,

I'm pretty new to web development. I have a few books on HTML, CSS etc, and I've had a look at a couple of things like Joomla and Drupal but found them a bit complicated (in relation to the time I have to invest in learning). I've decided to try WordPress as a result of what people say here, ie; it's among the easier web development tools out there.

I'm trying to design a site to broadcast a weekly radio show with maybe some featured tracks in an interactive player (I'm sure a widget will take care of that), and a few pages and links to some related sites, articles, etc. Secondly, I want another site to promote a small business featuring a couple of pages (about us, contact - not much more).

I suppose I have two questions.

1. How do the people here think WordPress will suit that?

2. (The main one) I don't know how to get around one issue on the WP install. I'm trying to install it as my sole web development tool, but after I adapt the config.php file to suit the corresponding MySQL database I get stuck. It seems to look for a site to install it into, and as I said - I want to use it to begin building my site. Am I missing something. Is it simply a CMS intended to operate around an existing site? I didn't get that impression at all in my research!

Also - if I try to click open my config.php file the command shell pops up for a second and disappears before I get a hint of whether anything goes wrong or not.

Any help on this matter will be hugely appreciated!

[Renaissance-Design]

First things first: are you installing on your local machine or a public-facing webserver?

[alphaBETA]

Renaissance-Design, on 12 January 2012 - 03:05 PM, said:

First things first: are you installing on your local machine or a public-facing webserver?

Yeah, just reaised that I didn't specify: xampp localhost

[empek]

When a wp-config.php isn't present, Wordpress will help you with the setup when you visit the local URL.

Have a blank database ready along with the user and password.

Once you set up your database connection, the second step will let you set up the website with a title, default admin user, and password. This is not a step that looks for an existing website, it helps you describe the one you're creating. (If that's the misunderstanding)

Wordpress is not a tool to build websites, it's a tool to manage them. Creating Wordpress themes still requires for you to be comfortable with HTML & CSS, and have a working knowledge of PHP. If you don't have the time to learn those, you could look into buying a theme, or finding a free one.

Hope that helps.

[alphaBETA]

Great, thanks!

I actually sorted it out in the meantime. I had it all wrong! I didn't have the appropriate file directory sorted out in the localhost url (to be fair, the tutorials said nothing clear about it), and I also had the WordPress files located in one subdirectory file too many in my Xampp htdocs folder. I had to extract the content files straight into my site's dedicated folder within htdocs and do away with the parent file they came bundled in. Hey presto, 5 min job that took me 5 hours - WordPress now installed and functioning!

OK, so when it comes to actually building my sites I have Aptana Studio. It looks cool and it seems like it'll be handy to use once I get my feet off the ground.

Funny though. All the spiel told me WordPress could be used to build sites, along with being a CMS. Anyway, thanks for the help and if any other newbs want me to go through my problem in detail if they're having the same issues just let me know and I'll do my best.

[empek]

Glad you got it working!

The thing about building sites using Wordpress is that: you can create all content, pages, blog posts and more using the CMS, so form that point of view, I guess you could build a site using Wordpress. At that end of the day, you still need a Wordpress Theme to get you there in the first place.

Happy Wordpress-ing!

[alphaBETA]

Thanks empek!

See you around!

[WebDesignBournemouth]

I see many people installing local LAMP servers, hosting is pretty cheap these days, infact most come with a dozen of free addon domains.

Info domains are like £1.00 each for a whole year, I buy test-site-example.info, and on the server I use .htaccess to block every IP apart from my own.

That means I don't have to mess around with a local web server, and everything is tested on a real webserver and most likely the one you will install too any how.

My 2 Cents.

[alphaBETA]

WebDesignBournemouth, on 22 February 2012 - 11:01 PM, said:

I see many people installing local LAMP servers, hosting is pretty cheap these days, infact most come with a dozen of free addon domains.

Info domains are like £1.00 each for a whole year, I buy test-site-example.info, and on the server I use .htaccess to block every IP apart from my own.

That means I don't have to mess around with a local web server, and everything is tested on a real webserver and most likely the one you will install too any how.

My 2 Cents.

OK, cool. Thanks for the advice. I think you might have a good point here.