Using WordPress

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 control panel.
   2. Click Domains / websites ‣ Applications. The list of applications appears.
   3. Click the name of the WordPress application.
   4. Make a note of the password in the Extra info field.
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 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 prompt at the top of the Dashboard.

See also

See Strengthening Passwords for important information about choosing passwords.

Note

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

2. Click Databases ‣ Databases

3. In the row of the WordPress’s application’s database, click phpMyAdmin. The phpMyAdmin login page appears.

4. In the Username field, enter the name of the database user for the WordPress application.

   Note

   To find the WordPress application’s database user, open ~/webapps/wp/wp-config.php in a text editor, where wp is the name of the WordPress application, and look for a line like this:

   define('DB_USER', 'username_app_');
   

   The second parameter is database username (username_app_, in this example).

5. In the Password field, enter the database password.

6. Click the Go button. The phpMyAdmin site appears.

7. Click the Databases tab. A list of databases appears.

8. Click on the name of the WordPress database. A list of tables appears.

   Note

   To find the WordPress application’s database name, open ~/webapps/wp/wp-config.php in a text editor, where wp is the name of the WordPress application, and look for a line like this:

   define('DB_NAME', 'username_app_');
   

   The second parameter is the name of the database (username_app_, in this example).

9. Click the Export tab. The dump form appears.

10. Click to select Add DROP TABLE / VIEW / PROCEDURE / FUNCTION.

11. 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 control panel.

2. Click Databases ‣ Databases

3. In the row of the WordPress’s application’s database, click phpMyAdmin. The phpMyAdmin login page appears.

4. In the Username field, enter the name of the database user for the WordPress application.

   Note

   To find the WordPress application’s database user, open ~/webapps/wp/wp-config.php in a text editor, where wp is the name of the WordPress application, and look for a line like this:

   define('DB_USER', 'username_app_');
   

   The second parameter is database username (username_app_, in this example).

5. In the Password field, enter the database password.

6. Click the Go button. The phpMyAdmin site appears.

7. Click the Databases tab. A list of databases appears.

8. Click on the name of the WordPress database. A list of tables appears.

   Note

   To find the WordPress application’s database name, open ~/webapps/wp/wp-config.php in a text editor, where wp is the name of the WordPress application, and look for a line like this:

   define('DB_NAME', 'username_app_');
   

   The second parameter is the name of the database (username_app_, in this example).

9. Click the Import tab. The import form appears.

10. Click the Choose file button. Your system’s file selection dialog appears. Select the SQL file to be restored and dismiss the dialog.

11. Click the Go button. The file is processed and a confirmation message appears.

Sending Email from WordPress

To configure WordPress to be able to send messages for comment notifications, password recovery, and other features:

1. Open the WordPress site Log In page (for example, http://example.com/wp-login.php) and log in with the administrator account. The Dashboard page appears.
2. Open the General Settings page. Click Settings ‣ General. The General Settings page appears.
3. In the E-mail address field, enter an outgoing email address for your WordPress site. This address must be an address configured in the WebFaction control panel.
4. Click the Save changes button. The Settings saved notification appears at the top of the page.

Sending Email with the Configure SMTP Plugin

WordPress can be configured to use an SMTP server to send email messages by using the Configure SMTP plugin. This method is optional. To use the Configure SMTP plugin:

Note

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

1. Open the WordPress site Log In page (for example, http://mysite.example/wp-login.php) and log in with the administrator account. The Dashboard page appears.
2. Click Plugins ‣ Add New.
3. In the Search field, enter smtp.
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://mysite.example/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, SMTP port, Secure connection prefix, Use SMTPAuth, SMTP username, SMTP password, and Sender name fields, enter the SMTP server’s connection details. For the WebFaction SMTP server, use these values:

   SMTP host

   smtp.webfaction.com

   SMTP port

   465

   Secure connection prefix

   ssl

   Use SMTPAuth

   Yes

   SMTP username

   A WebFaction mailbox name.

   SMTP password

   The mailbox password.

6. In the Sender name field, enter a display name for email messages sent by WordPress.

7. 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.

Note

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

Upgrading Automatically

Note

WordPress can only be upgraded automatically with versions 2.7 or higher. Please see Upgrading Manually for other versions of WordPress.

To upgrade a WordPress installation automatically:

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.

Upgrading Manually

Note

For more details on upgrading WordPress manually, please see the WordPress Codex documentation Upgrading WordPress Extended.

To upgrade a WordPress installation manually:

1. Back up the WordPress database contents.

2. Back up the WordPress installation files.

   1. Open an SSH session to your account.
   2. Switch to the WordPress application directory. Enter cd ~/webapps/wp, where wp is the name of the WordPress application as it appears on the control panel, and press Enter.
   3. Create a backup archive in your home directory. Enter tar -zcvf $HOME/wp-backup-$(date +%Y-%m-%d).tar.gz . and press Enter. The files are compressed into a new archive in your home directory, wp-backup-date.tar.gz where date is today’s date.

3. Deactivate plugins.

   1. Log in to the WordPress dashboard.
   2. Click Plugins. The Plugins table appears.
   3. Select all of the plugins. Click the checkbox beside Plugin in the table header row.
   4. In the Bulk Actions menu, click to select Deactivate.
   5. Click the Apply button.

4. Prepare the WordPress directory for new files.

   1. Open an SSH session to your account.
   2. Switch to the WordPress application directory. Enter cd ~/webapps/wp and press Enter.
   3. Create a directory to store existing files needed after the upgrade. Enter mkdir -p upgrade and press Enter.
   4. Copy the required files to the upgrade directory.
      1. Enter cp wp-config.php .htaccess upgrade and press Enter.
      2. Enter cp -R wp-content upgrade and press Enter.
   5. Copy any additional WordPress files you have made modifications to (for example, index.php) to the upgrade directory. Enter cp filenames upgrade, where filenames are a space-separated list of files, and press Enter.
   6. Remove the existing WordPress files.
      1. Enter rm wp*.php .htaccess license.txt readme.html xmlrpc.php and press Enter.
      2. Enter rm -r wp-admin wp-includes and press Enter.

5. Install the new WordPress files.

   1. Download the most recent WordPress release. Enter wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz and press Enter. A new file, latest.tar.gz, is created in the current directory.
   2. Extract the archive. Enter tar -xvf latest.tar.gz and press Enter. The contents of the archive are extracted to a new directory, wordpress.
   3. Copy the contents of wordpress to the current directory. Enter cp -rp wordpress/* . and press Enter.
   4. Restore wp-config.php. Enter cp upgrade/wp-config.php . and press Enter.

6. Upgrade the WordPress database.

   1. Open the WordPress dashboard in a browser. The Database Upgrade Required appears.
   2. Click the Update WordPress Database button. After the update is finished, the Update Complete page appears.
   3. Click the Continue button. The WordPress log in form appears.

7. Restore any additional files. If you copied any additional files (such as index.php) to the upgrade directory, restore them to their original locations now.

   If you modified any of the default WordPress themes or plugins, restore those modifications from upgrade/wp-content to wp-content as well.

8. Remove the WordPress installation files.

   1. Open an SSH session to your account.
   2. Switch to the WordPress application directory. Enter cd ~/webapps/wp and press Enter.
   3. Enter rm latest.tar.gz and press Enter.
   4. Enter rm -r wordpress/ and press Enter.

9. Reactivate plugins.

   1. Log in to the WordPress dashboard.
   2. Click Plugins. The Plugins table appears.
   3. Select all of the plugins. Click the checkbox beside Plugin in the table header row.
   4. In the Bulk Actions menu, click to select Activate.
   5. Click the Apply button.

The WordPress upgrade is now complete.