Wordpress is a database driven blogging program designed to make it exceedingly

easy to publish an online blog, sometimes also called a weblog or journal.

CONFIGURING WORDPRESS FOR THE FIRST TIME

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Once this package is installed, there are a few configuration items which need

to be performed before the blog is usable.  First, you need to establish a

username and password to connect to your MySQL database as, and make both

MySQL and Wordpress aware of this.  Let's start by creating the database and the

username / password inside MySQL first:

  # mysql

  mysql> create database wordpress;

  Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

  mysql> grant all privileges on wordpress.* to wordpress identified by 'wordpress';

  Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

  mysql> flush privileges;

  Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

  mysql> exit

  Bye

  #

Under certain curcumstances, you may need to run variations of the "grant"

command:

mysql> grant all privileges on wordpress.* to wordpress@localhost identified by 'wordpress';

   OR

mysql> grant all privileges on wordpress.* to wordpress@'%' identified by 'wordpress';

This has created an empty database called 'wordpress', created a user named

'wordpress' with a password of 'wordpress', and given the 'wordpress' user total

permission over the 'wordpress' database.  Obviously, you'll want to select a

different password, and you may want to choose different database and user

names depending on your installation.  The specific values you choose are

not constrained, they simply need to be consistent between the database and the

config file.

Next, you need to edit your /etc/wordpress/wp-config.php file to reflect the

values you've chosen.  These values will go in the appropriate places at the

beginning of that file.

Once that's done and the database server and web server have been started, 

open a web browser to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php and 

follow the instructions given to you on the pages you see to set up the 

database tables and begin publishing your blog.

UPGRADING WORDPRESS

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In order to upgrade from a 2.1 series package, there are several steps you

will need to take.  If you've already performed the 'yum update', all is not 

lost, and you more than likely still be able to complete the upgrade

painlessly.

First, you will want to back up your entire database.  This is simply common

sense, but it is also mentioned explicitly in Wordpress's upgrade instructions.

You should have disabled all your plugins.  Having old plugins still active

could cause problems, as the old plugins may not be compatible with the new

version of Wordpress.

Once all the plugins are disabled, run the actual yum update.  Once this

completes, you should point a browser at 

http://<your wordpress host>/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php and follow the

instructions that appear in the browser window.  Once this is completed, you 

can begin reactivating plugins one at a time.

If you need a more detailed upgrade document, or you run into problems, please

see the Wordpress upgrade documentation at 

http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress#Detailed_Instructions