There are several ways to install a new blogging platform onto your web hosts server. Today I’d like to tell you the easiest way to install WordPress onto your hosting server. Similar techniques can be used for other blogging platforms and or other programs that are available through your hosts Fantastico feature.

If your web hosting account is set up with C-Panel you’re in luck. You should be able to reach your C-Panel area directly simply by placing/cpanel at the end of your domain url. For example http://yourdomain.com/cpanel. Once you connect with C-Panel you’ll have to sign in with your hosting account user name and password.

Once you have signed into the C-panel area you’ll see a number of icons. Each icon will lead you to useful features that you can use to maintain your websites, webmail, MySQL databases and many other features.

One of the icons will be called Fantastico. Click on the Fantastico icon and you’ll be taken to a page that lists all of the different software applications that Fantastico can automatically install to your directories.

If you want to install a new WordPress blog simply look for the section that says Blogs. You’ll see WordPress listed there as well as perhaps a few other blogging platforms. Click on WordPress and go through the install procedure.

You’ll be asked which directory you’d like to host your new blog on. If you only have one domain hosted with your webhost the choice will be easy. Select your domain in the first section. Then, if you want the blog to be the main feature of your domain select leave the “install in Directory” section blank. If you’d like your blog to be reachable by an url such as http://yourdomain.com/blog then place a name for the new directory in this section.

Note, if you’d like to create a blog in a sub-domain you must use the sub-domain feature in C-Panel to create a sub-domain first, once you’ve done that you’ll see the sub-domain listed in your domain choices when you attempt to install WordPress. You’d select your new sub-domain and leave the “Install directory” section blank if you want your blog to be in a domain that looks like http://blog.mydomain.com.

The rest is pretty simple. Fill in the rest of the information such as your log in user name and password. This can be, and usually is different than the log in that you use for your webhost. It could be as simple as username admin and a unique password.

Continue to follow the directions and in minutes you’ll have a new blog to begin setting up. I’ll talk about setting up a new blog in a future post.