Figure 12-6: The Buy a Domain page in Java

Making Code 3/9 in Java Figure 12-6: The Buy a Domain page

12 Click the Preview link 13 If you don t like what you see, you can click the Hide Preview link and go back to the drawing board If you re satisfied, click the Publish Post button instead You re done

Although Blogger (see the preceding section) is hosted on Google s servers, WordPress is an open-source blogging program that resides on your own Web server There are pluses and minuses to both approaches Of course, any software that runs on someone else s server is software that reduces the load on your own server, but it s also software that you have (of course) less control over In such a case, you need to be sure that you can trust the provider to give you good service; with Google, however, you can count on one of the most reliable companies around The odds are very good that your Web service provider already has the prerequisite software needed to run WordPress, but you might want to doublecheck before you commit to using it that both PHP and MySQL are a part of your service Before you decide to install WordPress yourself, check with your Web provider Your provider might do it for you as part of their basic service because it s such a popular program and they get a lot of requests for it Many providers even offer automated installation of WordPress; check out the options on your Webmaster s control panel and see if that s included Here s the easy process for how to get and install WordPress: 1 Go to wordpressorg and click the Download WordPress button On the following page (believe it or not), click the same button again (gotta love redundancy) 2 Once the zip file is downloaded, extract its contents into a folder 3 Upload the folder s contents to your Web server 4 Create a MySQL database on your Web server Normally, this is a simple matter of clicking a link or button on your Web service provider s control panel that says something along the lines of Manage MySQL Databases, then another on a new page that says Create MySQL Database All you do then is to give it a name of your choice If the situation is more complicated, you might want to consider changing providers!

If you have any doubts or hesitations about how to proceed or exactly what information is required on your system, check with your Web service provider No matter how strange something may seem to you, they ve probably dealt with it a thousand times; don t be too surprised if they get you the answer right away 5 Surf with your Web browser to the location where you ve installed the WordPress files and open the installphp file (for example, www yourownsitecom/wp-admin/installphp) 6 Enter the requested data (such as the name of the database you created in Step 4) and your MySQL user name, then click the Submit button Again, if you don t know these, just ask your provider 7 You re asked to enter a title for your blog and your e-mail address When you ve done so, click the Install WordPress button and you re done Just log in to get started When you ve got WordPress installed on your system, you can modify things to suit your own particular needs Figure 12-9 shows the WordPress dashboard from which you control things

There s a default posting that you may want to view; if you want to read the whole thing, just click the View All button in that message Otherwise, move your mouse pointer over it until a series of options appears below the posting and click the Delete link