How To Install WordPress on iPage Web Hosting

Question:  Hi everyone, I’m trying to start my own website-yay!  I had no idea, however, that it would be so confusing! First I went to wordpress.org, and they told me that I needed web hosting, so I set up an account with ipage.com that gives me unlimited hosting and a free domain. I made my domain. It’s going to be a fashion design portfolio of sorts…so far so good right?

Then I got confused. Trying to follow wordpress instructions for windows is kind of out of my league…I got that I need to have a FTP client so I downloaded Cyberduck and later, at the instruction of a youtube video, a free trial of Fetch. I installed wordpress from ipage.com and made an FTP login, and got into the administrative dashboard of popfrock.com. I also (thanks youtube!) installed a theme by downloading it and then dragging the little folder into the “themes” folder once I logged into Fetch. Then I went to my wordpress dashboard thing and typed in a quickie test post. Have I done okay so far?

Problem is, if you visit the website you’ll see that it says it’s under construction. How do I get what I do (posts, theme change, etc) to show up on the site?

Thanks everybody! Hope this all makes sense…I’m a little confused

Answer:  First off, you didn’t need to do anything at WordPress.org to get WordPress installed on your iPage hosting account because WordPress is already there.  To install WordPress on iPage, log into your web hosting control panel.  Right there in the Website section, you should see the WordPress logo. Click on it to install WordPress on a domain on your account. There are a couple of things you should know before you install it. Click here to see exactly, step-by-step how to install WordPress on iPage.

Under Construction Page

The reason you’re seeing the under construction page is because you haven’t deleted the Home.html page. In your iPage control panel, us the FileManager to look at the files in the root of your account. Delete Home.html. That’s the under construction page.

Here are some iPage tutorials to help you out.

Uploading Themes To WordPress

If you want to install your own themes, you  can do it from the WordPress Dashboard under Appearance.  Browse your computer to find the .zip file of the theme and upload, then activate it.  ALWAYS preview it first before you activate it.  If the theme is already unzipped, then you’ll have to FTP the theme folder from your computer to your server to the /wp-content/themes/ folder.  You should then see it in Appearance, Themes screen.  If not, just hit <F5> to refresh the page.

If you lose the widgets you had in your sidebar when you activate a new theme, go to Appearance, Widgets, and you’ll see them down the page in the Inactive Widgets section.  Just drag them back to the sidebar to the location you want them to appear.