Creating WordPress Websites

Creating a site on your computer

• Local server• Local WordPress installation• Setting Up Dreamweaver

Installing a Local server

• For WordPress an AMP type server is needed– A – Apache is the HTTP server– M – MySQL is the database server– P – PHP (also includes Python and Perl) is the

application server• Windows installation – WAMP• Macintosh installation – MAMP• Linux installation - LAMP

HTTP message traffic(1) Client sends an HTTP request (a url for the webpage to be displayed)(2) URL includes PHP files so send a request to application server(3) PHP file includes requests for data from database so send request to database

server(4) Database server sends back the data that is requested

Apache (HTTP server)

PHP Application Server

MySQL database server

HTML web

page

1 2 3

456

(5) Application process the database info and PHP code – sends backResult to HTTP server as HTML(6) HTTP server sends HTML pages and assets back to client (WebBrowser)

Apache – HTTP server

• Apache is an HTTP server which works with all Operating Systems (OS)

• Job of the HTTP server is to receive requests from clients (web browsers)

• Static web pages (made up of HTML files and associated files) – all info collected and sent back to client as a HTTP response

• Dynamic web pages (such as php files) sent to application server for processing

Application Servers

• There are multiple types of application servers– ASP – Active Server Pages - Windows only– ASP.NET – also Active Server Pages – Windows– PHP server – part of the AMP family

• PHP Application server parses (reads) the PHP code and dynamically constructs the HTTP response. All PHP commands are executed on the server and the results are part of the HTTP response sent back by HTTP server

Database Server

• AMP’s database server is MySQL• Others available – Oracle, Microsoft SQL• PHP code may use a database to get and store

information within its code. The SQL commands are sent to the database server which process the request and sends the results back to the Application server which can then continue

Local site setup

• Install the AMP server (it’s free)– MAMP ->

http://www.mamp.info/en/mamp/index.html– WAMP ->

http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php– LAMP -> Linux installation

Start Local Servers

• Start AMP (in my case MAMP)

Create a database

Where is it?

Install WordPress

• Download WordPress from WordPress.org http://wordpress.org/download/

• Look at previous slide and see that it is installed under MAMP and database – called blog in my directory

Create a Dreamweaver Site• Now create a new site in Dreamweaver.• Define the folder to point to the same

Applications/MAMP/htdocs/explore_ca (for example) • Connect Dreamweaver to the local server

Working on a real server

• You can also work on an actual domain using a real WordPress installation and a working remote server

• http://nkybluejays.org• http://merderdesigns.com