Installing WordPress Manually in cPanel: Step by Step

Installing WordPress by hand means you know exactly what you did, and makes it easier to understand where each part lives when something goes wrong later. It takes about fifteen minutes.

1. Download WordPress

Download the current version only from the official site, wordpress.org. "Ready-made" packages from other sites can contain malicious code.

2. Upload the files to the server

1. Open File Manager in cPanel and go to your site's folder. For the main domain that's public_html.
2. Use Upload to upload the .zip file you downloaded.
3. Right-click the file and choose Extract. The files go into a folder called wordpress.
4. Select everything inside wordpress and move it up one level, into public_html. Then delete the empty folder and the .zip file.

3. Create a database and user

1. In cPanel open Databases › MySQL Databases.
2. Create a new database. cPanel adds your account name as a prefix.
3. On the same page, create a new database user with a strong password. Note the password down.
4. Under Add User to Database, add the user to the database and select All Privileges.

4. Run the setup wizard

Open your domain in the browser. WordPress asks for a language and then the database details:

• Database name and username: the full names cPanel shows, including the prefix.
• Password: the database user's password.
• Database host: usually localhost.
• Table prefix: the default wp_ works; you can change it if you like.

Then set the site title and the administrator username and password. Don't use a guessable username such as "admin".

5. Right after installation

• Check that the site loads over HTTPS and that the addresses in Settings › General start with https://. If you have trouble, see our HTTPS guide.
• Under Settings › Permalinks, choose "Post name".
• Delete default plugins and themes you won't use, and check file and folder permissions against the permissions guide.
• Install the LiteSpeed Cache plugin.
• Go through our pre-launch checklist before going live.

A common error: "Error establishing a database connection"

This almost always means the database name, username or password was mistyped, or the user wasn't added to the database. The details are written to wp-config.php; open it in File Manager to check the values.