WordPress

WordPress is a blog publishing application.

Getting Started Screencast

WebFaction has prepared a screencast to get you up and running with WordPress quickly.

Screencast Resources

In the screencast, we mentioned some useful resources. Here’s a handy list of hyperlinks from the screencast:

• [0:28] WordPress homepage
• [4:13] Pastebin
• [4:13] WebFaction User Guide > Databases
• [6:38] WordPress > Extend
• [6:43] Webfaction Forum

Logging in to WordPress

The first time you log in to WordPress, you must use the admin user with an automatically generated password. To log in:

1. Get the admin user’s password.
   1. Log in to the WebFaction control panel.
   2. Click Domains / websites ‣ Applications. The applications list appears.
   3. Make a note of the password in the Extra info column in the row for the WordPress application.
2. Log in to WordPress.
   1. Open the WordPress Log In page at http://domain_path/wp-login.php where domain_path is the domain and URL path where the WordPress application is mounted.
   2. In the Username field, enter admin.
   3. In the Password field, enter the password from the WebFaction control panel.
   4. Click the Log In button. The WordPress Dashboard appears.

Now you can control all of the settings related to your WordPress blog. You can also change the admin password by following the Notice prompt at the top of the Dashboard.

Note

Any change to the WordPress admin password will not be reflected on the WebFaction control panel.

See also

WordPress Codex documentation site

Backing Up and Restoring WordPress Content

Backing Up

To back up the content of your WordPress blog to a SQL dump:

1. Log in to the WebFaction control panel.
2. Click Databases ‣ MySQL phpMyAdmin interface. The phpMyAdmin login page appears.
3. In the Username field, enter account_app, where account is your account name and app is the name of the WordPress application as it appears in the control panel.
4. In the Password field, enter the database password.
5. Click the Go button. The phpMyAdmin site appears.
6. Click the Databases tab. A list of databases appears.
7. Click account_app. A list of tables appears.
8. Click the Export tab. The dump form appears.
9. Click to select Add DROP TABLE / VIEW / PROCEDURE / FUNCTION.
10. Click the Go button. Your browser will prompt or begin the download of the SQL file.

Restoring

To restore the content of your WordPress blog from a SQL dump:

1. Log in to the WebFaction control panel.
2. Click Databases ‣ MySQL phpMyAdmin interface. The phpMyAdmin login page appears.
3. In the Username field, enter account_app, where account is your account name and app is the name of the WordPress application as it appears in the control panel.
4. In the Password field, enter the database password.
5. Click the Go button. The phpMyAdmin site appears.
6. Click the Databases tab. A list of databases appears.
7. Click account_app. A list of tables appears.
8. Click the Import tab. The import form appears.
9. Click the Choose file button. Your system’s file selection dialog appears. Select the SQL file to be restored and dismiss the dialog.
10. Click the Go button. The file will be processed and a confirmation message appears.

Sending Email from WordPress

You can send email messages from WordPress by using the Configure SMTP plugin. To use the Configure SMTP plugin:

Note

WebFaction includes the SMTP plugin by default with installations of WordPress create after October 2009. If you’re using an older installation of WordPres, follow these steps to install the Configure SMTP plugin:

1. Open the WordPress site Log In page (for example, http://mydomain.com/wp-login.php) and log in with the administrator account. The Dashboard page appears.
2. Click Plugins ‣ Add New.
3. Enter smtp in the Search field.
4. Click the Search Plugins button.
5. Find the Configure SMTP plugin in the list that appears.
6. Click the Install link at the end of the row. A dialog with additional information appears.
7. Click Install Now.

1. Open the WordPress site Log In page (for example, http://mydomain.com/wp-login.php) and log in with the administrator account. The Dashboard page appears.
2. Click Plugins.
3. Beneath Configure SMTP, click Activate.
4. Click Settings ‣ SMTP. The Configure SMTP Settings page appears.
5. In the SMTP host field, enter smtp.webfaction.com.
6. Enter 465 in the SMTP port field.
7. In the Secure connection prefix menu, click to select ssl.
8. Click to select Use SMTPAuth.
9. In the SMTP username field, enter your WebFaction mailbox name.
10. In the SMTP password field, enter your WebFaction mailbox password.
11. In the Sender name field, enter a display name for email messages sent by WordPress.
12. Click Save Changes.

WordPress will now be able to send email messages for notifications and other uses.

Upgrading WordPress

You can upgrade WordPress installations in-place. Follow the directions for your WordPress version.

Note

Upgrading WordPress will not update the version number listed on the WebFaction control panel.

Version 2.7 or Higher

To upgrade a WordPress installation of 2.7 or higher:

1. Log in to WordPress.
2. Click Tools. The Tools menu expands.
3. Click Upgrade. The Upgrade WordPress page appears.
4. Click the Upgrade Automatically button. The upgrade is downloaded and installed.

Other Versions

To upgrade a WordPress installation with a version older than 2.7:

1. Install the WordPress Automatic upgrade plugin.
   1. Copy the Download link URL from the plugin’s directory page. For example, version 1.2.5 of the plugin uses the download URL http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wordpress-automatic-upgrade.1.2.5.zip.
   2. Open an SSH session to your account.
   3. Switch to the WordPress application’s plugins subdirectory. Enter cd ~/webapps/worpdress/wp-content/plugins and press Enter.
   4. Download the plugin. Enter wget url, where url is the download URL copied previously, and press Enter. A zip file containing the plugin is created.
   5. Unzip the plugin. Enter unzip wordpress-automatic-upgrade.{version}.zip, where version is the version number of the plugin.
   6. Log in to WordPress.
   7. Click Plugins. The Plugin Management page appears.
   8. In the row of the table for Wordpress Automatic Upgrade, click Activate.
2. Upgrade WordPress.
   1. A notice, Click Here to Automatically Upgrade WordPress to latest Version, appears at the top of the page. Click Click Here. The WordPress automatic upgrade page appears.
   2. Follow the automatic upgrade instructions as they appear.
3. Remove the plugin.
   1. Click Plugins. The Plugins list appears.
   2. In the row for Wordpress Automatic Upgrade, click Deactivate.
   3. In the row for Wordpress Automatic Upgrade, click Delete. The Delete Plugin page appears.
   4. Click the Yes, Delete these files button.

Using Multisite

As of WordPress version 3.0, WordPress MU has become part of the core WordPress software. With the Multisite features of WordPress 3.0, you can create a network of WordPress blogs from a single installation of WordPress using subpaths (for example, example.com/blog1, example.com/blog2, etc.) or subdomains (for example, blog1.example.com, blog2.example.com, etc.). To use the Multisite feature of WordPress to create a blog network:

1. Create a WordPress application.

   1. Log in to the WebFaction control panel.
   2. Click Domains / websites ‣ Applications. The Apps list appears.
   3. Click the Add new () button. The Add page appears.
   4. In the Name field, enter a name for the WordPress application.
   5. In the App category menu, click to select WordPress.
   6. Click the Create button. The View page appears with a confirmation message. The extra_info field will also contain the generated password for the admin user.

2. Create a WordPress website entry.

   1. Click Domains / websites ‣ Websites. The Sites list appears.
   2. Click the Add new () button. The Add page appears.
   3. In the Name field, enter a name for the website record.
   4. In the Subdomains menu, click to select the desired domain for your WordPress blog network.
   5. In the Site apps table, click the Add new () button. A new row appears in the table.
   6. In the App menu, click to select the WordPress application.
   7. In the URL path field, enter /.
   8. Click the Create button. The View page appears with a confirmation message.

3. Wait two minutes while the website record changes take effect.

4. Enable WordPress Multisite.

   1. Open an SSH session to your account.
   2. Open ~/webapps/app/wp-config.php in a text editor.
   3. On a new line beneath <?php, add define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);.
   4. Save and close the file.

5. Configure WordPress Multisite.

   1. Log in to the WordPress Dashboard with the admin user. You can find the login page at http://domain/wp-login.php, where domain is the domain you selected for your website record.
   2. In the menu on the left, click Tools ‣ Network. The Create a Network of WordPress Sites page appears.
   3. Click to select the address type you would like to use for blogs on the WordPress network:
      • Choose Sub-domains for network blogs to use subdomains to form URLs. For example, marysblog.example.com, johnsblog.example.com, and so on would use the Sub-domains selection. Subdomain-specific configuration steps will be required later in this tutorial.
      • Choose Sub-directories for network blogs to use subdirectories to form URLs. For example, example.com/marysblog, example.com/johnsblog and so on would use the Sub-directories selection.
   4. In the Network Details section, adjust any preferences as desired.
   5. Click the Install button. The Enabling the Network page appears.
   6. The Enabling the Network page provides several important steps to complete the WordPress Multisite setup. Complete the directions provided before continuing.
   7. Log out of the WordPress site.

6. For Subdomain users only: Configure subdomains wildcard.

   Note

   You may opt to manually add subdomains rather than using a a wildcard. When you create an additional Multisite blog, however, you must add the new subdomain to the WordPress application’s domain and website entry or the Multisite blog will not be reachable.

   1. Log in to the WebFaction control panel.
   2. Click Domains / websites ‣ Domains. The list of domains associated with your account appears.
   3. In the row of the domain in use with the WordPress website, click the Edit () button. The Edit page appears.
   4. Click the Add new () button. A new row appears in the Subdomains table.
   5. In the new row’s Prefix field, enter * for a wildcard subdomain.
   6. Click the Update button. The View page appears with a confirmation message.
   7. Click the Domains / websites ‣ Websites. The Sites list appears.
   8. In the row of the website record for the Multisite WordPress, installation, click the Edit () button. The Edit page appears.
   9. In the Subdomains menu, add the wildcard subdomain to the selected domains.
   10. Click the Update button. The View page appears with a confirmation message.

You can now make and manage new Multisite blogs: just login to the WordPress Dashboard and use the Super Admin module in the menu.