Troubleshooting A WordPress Install

Posted: August 20th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Web Apps | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

wordpress troubleshootingManually installing WordPress is a pretty simple and straightforward process but sometimes things can go wrong.  Here are some possible problems you can encounter when installing WordPress and ways to fix them.

Problem: Incorrect database name/user name/password.  After creating a database and uploading WordPress to your web server you can usually go straight through the installation process simply by visiting the WordPress directory in your web browser and inputting the requested information, but if something goes wrong (maybe you made a typo or forgot to add the user name prefix many servers add to their database, and database user names) visiting the WordPress directory will no longer take you through the setup process it will simply give you an error message.

Solution: The way you can reenter your information correctly is by going to /wordpress/wp-admin/install.php where “/wordpress” is the instillation directory of your copy of WordPress. Read the rest of this entry »

Initial WordPress Setup

Posted: April 17th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Web Apps | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

WordPress is a great CMS, and blogging platform, but there are a few things you should change or consider adding out of the box. I’ve listed a few of these things below.

Permalinks: The most commonly used, and recommended  permalink structure for SEO is http://yourdomain/category/post-title. This Can be achieved in your WordPress admin area by clicking on Settings > Premalinks then selecting the Custom Structure option and placing /%category%/%postname%/ in the area provided.

XML Site Maps are used by many search engines to help index pages on web sites. Google XML Sitemaps is a popular plugin which helps generate a site map for your blog and keep it updated. Once you have your site map created it’d be a good Idea to set up a Google Web Master Tools account and submit your XML site map. Web master tools can be used to give you good information about your site and alert you to any potential problems. Read the rest of this entry »