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WordPress

Micah Headdings
Micah Headdings
3,701 Points

The Self-Hosting Process

Here's my situation.

I'm thinking about getting into offering clients a nice wordpress website, but I'm kind of confused as to how the process works. I'm in no way an expert to begin with.

If Sally's Restaurant wants me to make them a new website (meaning, they have a domain and web hosting already), how do I go about making that in wordpress? There is a theme I would like to use, but I'm not sure on some things...

  1. If I'm not planning on adding custom code (just working purely in wp-admin), there's no need for FTP, correct?

  2. Do I or they need to have a local install of WP on a computer at all times?

I appreciate any and all help on this.

jason chan
jason chan
31,009 Points

You need to upload the wordpress to a server or webhost.

You can make your local computer a sever if you want to, but it will eat your own upload band/cpu power. You have to dns cache your ip.

1 Answer

Whatever you do, please don't try to host the website yourself. I'm no WordPress developer, but here's what I'd do.

  1. Sign up for a free trial of Windows Azure (Microsoft Cloud)

  2. In your portal, create a new web app from the "gallery" and choose WordPress.

3 Watch Azure setup the dependencies and do the work.

  1. Now you have a standard WordPress installation. Install your own template and make Sally proud.

View step-by-step instructions of this here: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/web-sites-php-web-site-gallery/

Assuming the site gets a few hundred visits a month, you'll pay about $6 - 10 bucks a month at current costs. Azure provides credit freely, so if you find the right program,you'll probably pay nothing (While still charging Sally hosting course) Let me know if you have any questions. If you'd like to try out Azure, I'll set you up an environment.

Steven

Micah Headdings
Micah Headdings
3,701 Points

I appreciate the info. Had heard about Azure news recently, but haven't delved into it. I'm definitely not looking into hosting it myself, and I think Sally would probably appreciate keeping her current web hosting provider.