Installing WordPress on ibiblio

Installing WordPress on ibiblio is a cinch! Even if you're squeamish at the command line, you can simply follow our recipe:

  1. Use an SSH client to connect to login.ibiblio.org.
  2. Create (or request) a directory for your blog. For instance:
     $ cd /public/html/yoursite/
     $ mkdir wordpress
    
  3. Request a MySQL database if you don't have one already.

  4. Download and unpack the latest copy of WordPress:
     $ cd /public/html/yoursite
     $ wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
     $ tar xvfz latest.tar.gz
     $ rm latest.tar.gz
    
  5. Browse to http://www.ibiblio.org/yoursite/wordpress and follow the installation instructions.
If you need help or have problems with the installation, please drop us a note via http://www.ibiblio.org/help.

Upgrading WordPress on ibiblio

  1. Use an SSH client to connect to login.ibiblio.org.
  2. Back up your database tables. This only takes a minute and can really save you some headaches:
     $ mysqldump --opt -Q -h mysql.ibiblio.org -u user --password="xxxxxxx" dbname > wordpress-yyyymmdd.sql
    
    You'll want to substitute some of the flags above with yours. For instance, if your database server is mysql2.ibiblio.org, and dbname will probably match your username, etc. To save space, please gzip your SQL backup file:
     $ gzip wordpress-yyyymmdd.sql
    
  3. Disable all plugins. Wordpress can get grouchy if you don't disable your plugins.
  4. Change directories to the directory above your WordPress installation:
     $ cd /public/html/yoursite
    
    If your blog is a subdirectory named "wordpress" then you would do the following:
     $ wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
     $ tar xvfz latest.tar.gz
     $ rm latest.tar.gz
    
    WordPress may want to modify its database tables to accomodate the new version.
    Browse to http://www.ibiblio.org/yoursite/wp-admin/upgrade.php and follow the instructions.
  5. If your blog isn't a subdirectory named "wordpress" you'll want to do something like:
     $ mkdir ~/tmp
     $ cd ~/tmp
     $ wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
     $ tar xvfz latest.tar.gz
     $ rm latest.tar.gz
     $ rsync -av wordpress/ /public/html/yoursite/wordpress/
    
    Then proceed to the upgrade itself by browsing to http://www.ibiblio.org/yoursite/wp-admin/upgrade.php and following the instructions.
  6. Re-enable your plugins, one by one. If you enable a plugin and then can't get to your blog, use your SSH/SFTP client to go into your wp-content/plugins directory, and remove the plugin that caused things to go wonky.
That should do it! Please do be sure to subscribe to ibiblio-announce and webgroup, as the former is your way to stay informed of system changes and outages, while the latter tends to pick up discussion about web applications such as WordPress.

What to do when you have problems running WordPress on ibiblio