WordPress 2.5 requires:

• Apache
• PHP 4.3
• MySQL 4.0
• Apache mod_rewrite (optional, but highly recommended)

We're going to start with the STLLUG site, because it's simpler than the main SLUUG site.

Download the latest WordPress. You can get it from http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz, but you won't know what version you're getting. So you can see what versions are available at http://wordpress.org/download/release-archive/ and download from there.

# cd /home/www/
# wget http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.5.tar.gz -O wordpress-2.5.tar.gz

Unpack the program:

# tar xfz wordpress-2.5.tar.gz
# mv wordpress wordpress-2.5
# ln -sf wordpress-2.5 wordpress

Set ownership of the directory so Apache can use it:

# chown -R www-data:www-data .

Create the MySQL database (replace $WORDPRESS_MYSQL_USER with the real username, and $WORDPRESS_MYSQL_PWD with the real password):

# mysqladmin create wordpress
# mysql
	GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO $WORDPRESS_MYSQL_USER@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '$WORDPRESS_MYSQL_PWD';
	FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
	EXIT;

Tell WordPress about the database it will connect to.

# cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Edit wp-config.php and change the following settings:

define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');
define('DB_USER', '$WORDPRESS_MYSQL_USER');
define('DB_PASSWORD', '$WORDPRESS_MYSQL_PWD');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Remove some files that aren't needed after installing:

# rm license.txt readme.html wp-config-sample.php wp-admin/import*.php

Run the installation script by accessing http://dev.sluug.org/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php in a web browser.

Enter the weblog title ('Saint Louis GNU/Linux Users Group') and email address.

Record the admin password that is generated. It will be needed to log in to administer the application.

Log in as admin with the newly generated password.

Options / General

Weblog title: Saint Louis GNU/Linux Users Group
Tagline: Open Systems, Open Standards, Open Source
Weeks in the calendar should start on: Sunday

Options / Permalinks

Structure: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

There are several things that might be problematic trying to use WordPress as a CMS for general content (this is from version 1.5 or so – 2.5 has likely resolved them):

• No way to have the default page be a static page. It's always the latest blog entry.
• Any time you create a new page or post, the program has to rewrite .htaccess, and adds a lot of mod_rewrite entries. I mean a lot.
• List of pages doesn't seem to honor the ordering in the list on the right.

Complete installation and configuration of WordPress 2.5.

Use a single deployment of WordPress for several sites. Probably locate the "real" files in /usr/local and link them into the DocumentRoots for each site.

Test some other blog software:

• b2evolution
• TextPattern
• Serendipity