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How-toWordPress

How to install WordPress

Reading time
6 min
Last updated
22 Sep 2026

There are two ways to install WordPress and the one-click route is right for almost everybody. The manual method is worth knowing when you are moving a site, working in a subfolder, or debugging an install that went wrong.

  1. 01

    Open the installer

    In cPanel, find Softaculous Apps Installer and click the WordPress icon, then Install Now. On a managed WordPress plan this step is already done — the site exists before you log in.

  2. 02

    Choose the domain and directory

    Pick your domain from the dropdown. Set the protocol to https:// — if it is not offered, your certificate has not issued yet.

    Leave "In Directory" empty to install at the root (example.in). Softaculous pre-fills wp, which would put your site at example.in/wp. This is the single most common mistake at this screen.

  3. 03

    Set the admin account properly

    • Username — anything except admin. Every bot on the internet tries admin first.
    • Password — let it generate one and put it in a password manager.
    • Email — an address you actually read. Password resets and critical update notices go here.
    • Site title — real title now; changing it later is fine but the slug of your first posts is not.

    Click Install. It takes under a minute.

  4. 04

    Do the four things before you publish

    Straight after install, in Settings:

    • Permalinks → Post name. The default ?p=123 URLs are bad for search and painful to change once indexed.
    • Reading → untick "Discourage search engines". Installers sometimes set this and people find it six months later.
    • Discussion → require approval for comments, or turn them off.
    • Delete the unused themes and plugins. Hello Dolly and three default themes are dormant attack surface.

Installing manually

When you need control the installer does not give you:

  • Download WordPress from wordpress.org and unzip it.
  • Upload the contents of the wordpress folder — the contents, not the folder — to your document root over SFTP.
  • In cPanel, MySQL Databases: create a database, create a user, add the user to the database with All Privileges. Note all three values.
  • Visit your domain. WordPress asks for the database details and writes wp-config.php itself.

If it cannot write the file, it shows you the contents to paste into wp-config.php manually. That is normal on stricter permission setups.

What actually keeps it fast

A fresh WordPress is fast. It stops being fast because of what gets added. The three that matter most on Indian hosting:

  • Server-side caching. LiteSpeed Cache is built into the server on every FasterHost plan — install the plugin and it wires into it, rather than caching in PHP like most plugins do.
  • Image sizes. An unresized phone photo is 4 MB. This is the most common single cause of a slow Indian site.
  • Plugin count. Every plugin runs on every request. Twelve is a lot; thirty is a problem.

Common questions

The software is free and open source. You pay for hosting, a domain, and optionally premium themes or plugins.
Yes. Every FasterHost shared plan runs WordPress with one-click install, LiteSpeed caching and free SSL. A managed WordPress plan adds automatic updates, staging and object caching.
Create the subdomain in cPanel first, then choose it from the domain dropdown in Softaculous. The document root must be empty before installing.
Almost always an existing file in the target folder, a database user without privileges, or a document root that is not empty. Clear the folder and retry, or open a ticket and we will look at it.

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