We Got Served

A while back, we showed you how to Install PHP on IIS on your Windows Home Server.  Thanks to feedback from the community, it has been cleaned up, cleared up, and refined - the section on how to install MySQL has been expanded to include details and brief descriptions.  What we didn’t show you in that tutorial was how to install pre-made php software packages. There are many free packages that you can use, and that are very feature rich and useful for any number of different purposes.  We have a few tutorials ready for you on how to install these packages and the first up is blogging software, WordPress due to its popularity and demand.  We Got Served runs on Wordpress (although not on Windows Home Server) and is a simple but powerful solution for anyone who wants to start a blog. Here we go:

Check out the WGS Wiki for the most up to date version!

What you will need

• Remote access to the server
• WordPress 2.5.1 or whatever the lastest version is
• MySQL - The database. You will want to get the “Essential Package”

What to do

First thing’s first, and you will need to download WordPress and MySQL and put them on a network share. Then you are going to either use Remote Desktop Connection or Advanced Admin Console to gain access to the server.

Install WordPress

After the database is installed, we are going to extract all the WordPress files to “c:\inetpub\blog\”. Feel free to change blog to anything else, but it is easier to name it something obvious. It should look something like this:

You may notice the “wp-config.php” files. All the important database information is in there in plain text, including the password. This is why I recommend installing to the system drive rather than leaving it on the shares.  It may be a bit paranoid, but do you want somebody getting access to your database?

After extracting the files, right click on the “blog” directly, and select “Properties”. Find the “Security” tab and click the “Advanced” button. Add the user “IUSR_SERVER”, replacing “SERVER” with whatever you named your server. For instance, I named my server “UMMON”, so I added “IUSR_UMMON”. Now give that user Full Control. Enable “Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects”, and click okay.

• This will reset permissions on the files, and will revert back to being unchecked when it is done.

Now find “Administrative Tools” and open “Internet Information Services.” Under your computer’s name there is three entries. Open “Websites”, and then find “Default Web Site.” Right click on it and open the “New” group and select “Virtual Directory.” Not Virtual Directory from file. Now give the alias “blog” or whatever you want. This will be the path to your WordPress installation. Click “Next” and set the path to “C:\inetpub\blog” or whatever you named the directory. Click “Next”. It will give you options for the new virtual directory. Tell it to “Read”, and “Run scripts”.

Now you are done setting up the web service side of things.

Now you need to create the database.

Configure Database

If you haven’t installed MySQL yet, head over here first. Go the the start menu, and run “MySQL Command Line Client”. This will immediately ask you to enter a password. Enter the password you used when setting up MySQL. Now you need to create the database that WordPress is going to use. We’re going to use the name “wordpress” for the database. Feel free to change the name to whatever you want. It should look like this:

mysql> create database wordpress;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec)

Now that we have created the database, we need to create a user specifically for WordPress because using the root account is very unsafe and we recommended that you never do it. So we are going to create the username and give it permission to use the new database. The username we are going to use is “wpadmin” and the password “wppassword”. It should look like this:

mysql> use wordpress;
Database changed
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* to wpadmin@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'wppassword';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

Now you have the database and the info you need. Again, you will need to remember this or write it down.

Configure WordPress

Now navigate to your blog. It should look something like: “https://yourserver.homeserver.com/blog/” and you should see a page like this:

Just follow the screens until you get to the database configuration page. Use “wordpress” for the database name, “wpadmin” for the username and “wppassword” for the password. Don’t change the database host, but feel free to change the table prefix if you so desire, or if you are hosting more than one wordpress installation on the database. Just input the information that you want for the rest of it, and you’re done. Seriously, that is it. Just log into the site with the password it supplies and change whatever you want. You are a happy owner of a WordPress Blog.

Oh, the password is randomly generated, and that was the password for a testblog site I made just for this tutorial. So I know it does work. And for those wondering, that was a test install, not my main.

Done

Now you are done. Log on and blog away!  For more, head over to the We Got Served Wiki.

Stay tuned for more PHP software packages!