Creating your wordpress site

In order to create your personalized Wordpress on the IAM servers you will need to follow these steps.

The first step will require you to log into the IAM Department Wordpress server via an SSH client in order to verify your account and allow the server to create a personalized Wordpress folder for you to work in.

1. If working on an IAM Dept workstation you can use the PuTTY SSH client to gain shell access to the Wordpress server. This can be done by navigating to the Windows Start menu located in the lower left hand portion of your Windows Desktop. Click on "All Programs". Look for the PuTTY folder and then click on the "PuTTY.exe" file located inside in order to launch the client. If you are working from a PC off cammpus you can download and install PuTTY from this URL http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html.

  With the PuTTY client open enter the following information:
  
    Host Name: students.iam.colum.edu
    Port:      22

Be sure that SSH is selected as the connection type. Next click on the "Open" button to initiate the connection. This will open the PuTTY console.

You will now be prompted for your IAM Department username. It is typically in the form of firstname.lastname. Enter your username and hit enter on the keyboard. You will next be prompted for your IAM Department password. Supply your case sensitive password and hit "Enter" on the keyboard.

Upon successful authentication the system will say "creating home directory for firstname.lastname."

To view the contents of a directory use the "ls" command and hit enter. This will display the public_html folder. To move into a new directory use the "cd" command followed by the name of your directory. The command "cd public_html" will move you inside of that directory. Using the "ls" command will display the wordpress directory. The command "cd wordpress" will move you inside of the wordpress directory. Entering "ls" one more time will display the contents of your wordpress directory.

You may now close the PuTTY SSH session by typing in "exit" and hitting the enter key.

2. At this point you will want to open a web browser and navigate to the following URL in order to create a wp-config.php file.

http://students.iam.colum.edu/~firstname.lastname/wordpress

The web browser will notify you that "There doesn't seem to be a wp-config.php file. I need this before we can get started." Click on the button labeled "Creat a Configuration File" to continue.

The next page will prompt you to gather a few pieces of information provided by your instructor to continue.

                        1.Database name
                        2.Database username
                        3.Database password
                        4.Database host
                        5.Table prefix

Click on the button labeled "Let's Go".

3. Enter the following info into the wordpress setup page:

               1.Database name:       provided by instructor
               2.Database username    provided by instructor
               3.Database password    provided by instructor
               4.Database host        localhost
               5.Table prefix         FirstnameLastname

Once completed click on the "Submit" button.

4. The server will attempt to automatically generate a wp-config.php file. If it does not succeed, do not worry, you can create one and upload it manually.

First, hightlight all of the text located inside of the box found in the center of the screen. Be sure to scroll down to capture all of the text. Right click and select "copy". Next, open a simple text editor such as Notepad, Wordpad, or SCiTe and paste the copied text inside. Do not use Microsoft Word for this process as it may add unneeded formatting to the file. Save the file to your desktop as "wp-config.php".

Next, you will need to open an FTP client to upload the newly created "wp-config.php" file to wordpress server. We suggest using FileZilla which can be found in the lower left hand Windows Start menu by clicking on All Programs and scrolling down to find the client software. If working on a PC outside of the IAM Dept you can downlaod and install the client from here:

http://filezilla-project.org/download.php

With the Filezilla FTP client open you will need to enter the following information in order to initiate an FTP session to upload your file to the remote server.

       Hostname:    students.iam.colum.edu
       Username:    firstname.lastname
       Password:    yourpasswordhere
       Port:        22

Then click on the "Quickconnect" button. This will bring up the files located on the remote server on the right hand side of the screen and the files located on your local PC on the left hand side of the screen. On the remote server navigate to the wordpress directory.

     /firstname.lastname/public_html/wordpress

Next, drag and drop the "wp-config.php" file that you created earlier directly into the wordpress subdirectory on the remote server. It is a tiny file and will only take a moment to complete. View the contents of the wordpress subdirectory to confirm that the "wp-config.php" is residing in the directory now.

After you have completed the upload, return to your browser and click on the button labeled "Run the Install".

5. The server will process the contents of your freshly uploaded "wp-config.php" file and then ask you to complete the installation by entering the following info:

            Site Title
            Username
            Password (entered twice)
            Email Address

Once completed click on the button labeled "Install Wordpress".

The server will then notify you that the site has been built successfully. Click on the "Log In" button to log into the Wordpress Adminsitration Console. Provide the username and password combination that you created in the previous section in order to login.

That's it!

Your site can be accessed at http://students.iam.colum.edu/~firstname.lastname/wordpress/

You can administer your site by going to: http://students.iam.colum.edu/~firstname.lastname/wordpress/wp-admin/