Some tips on working with a self-hosted WordPress blog

Joanna Young moved from Typepad to a self-hosted WordPress blog, and wrote a manual on how to do it.

That’s a pretty good write up, if you are planning something like this, moving to self-hosted blog, I say you go and read it. She naturally ran into some problems, and noted those too. As I read her frequently I thought I will share my thoughts, but after a few minutes I decided that the comment would be too long, and I decided to write a blogpost instead. So here we go…

I have been on a self-hosted WordPress blog since the January of 2006 and since then I worked out some really handy tricks. So if you try to move your blog, or even if you just have a self-hosted WordPress blog, I share some tips you can use.

1. Go to http://www.wampserver.com, download and then install wamp server. By default it will install in the c:wamp directory. From now on, you have an Apache server with PHP5 and MySQL on your computer, congratulations. (This first step works only on Windows, on Linux it is a tad bit more complicated – as usual. )
2. Your next step is to go the c:wampwww directory and extract your WordPress here under whatever folder you want to. I recommend you to install everything you would install on your site, every theme, plug-in, etc.
3. Start your wamp server and on the system tray left click on it’s icon (a green arch like thingie) and on the pop-up menu click on the Start All Services. It will start Apache and MySQL.
4. Start your favourite browser and go to http://localhost.
   It will bring up the Wamp server page with Apache and PHP version and everything.
5. Under Your Projects you will see the WordPress directory, but first go to phpmyadmin (it’s under the heading Tools) and create a database for your WordPress blog.
6. When you are finished with that, go to your WordPress site, and do whatever it tells you to do, which will be the same thing you have to do on your self-hosted real blog.
7. If you intend to move your blog, now is the time to go and migrate it, like Joanna wrote in her tutorial. When you are finished you have everything set up as if it were a real blog site.
8. Now you have your posts, comments, etc. migrated, you can start to play around, and tweak it to your hearts content.
9. When you feel like you are glad with the result, go to your WordPress admin page, go to Manage->Export and export your blog. When you are ready go to your live site and Import the whole stuff.
10. When you are ready and imported everything, check your site – you will have to use the IP address for this but it worth it – and finally go and turn your domain name over to your new IP address.

If you do it this way, your blog will be up and running, accessible to the whole world while you hammer away backstage, and the only time it goes down is while your domain name is routed to your new address.

Another thing, which is quite important. You should set your WordPress to backup your site each day, and if you have a gmail account, make it to e-mail the backup file to you.

And, as you have your local WordPress blog set up, you can try the plug-ins and themes and all the usual stuff that has a chance to mess up your site safely.

The same thing can be achieved on Linux too, only Apache, PHP5 and MySQL has to be installed and configured independently, from there it’s the same.

I hope this tip was helpful a bit.

UPDATE: Ok, I just knew I will forgot something. So, if you run Wamp and all it shows is a blank page when you try to open http://localhost, don’t forget to check if Skype is running. If you run Skype and it is set to <i>Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections</i> it will hog up the port that Apache uses. This problem can be solved in several ways:

1. in Skype go to Tools->Options->Advance->Connection, and there set the checkbox <i>Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections</i> to false)
2. Quit Skype
3. , or bye starting Wamp first and Skype second – in this case, Skype will fall back to use a different port as the default one is used up by Wamp.

If you chose the 1st or 2nd solution, don’t forget to restart the server (left click on the tray icon of Wamp and choose either Start all services or Restart all services).

UPDATE 2: For all those who are using a Mac, read this post, and try MAMP instead of WAMP.