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 ---------------------------------------- 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 ------------------- 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:///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