For those of you that doesn’t know what Fantastico is, it’s a very clever mechanism built into hosting providers control panels that allows the hosting account owner to install any number of web applications (like WordPress) with the absolute minimum of fuss.
Here is the install window for WordPress:
As you can see from the above screen grab, all you do is choose your domain, tell it your admin UN and PW, your site name, your email address and then you hit the install button. Within seconds you have WordPress installed and up and running. This has got to be the easiest way to get a blog set up ever. There is one thing I don’t like and that is it doesn’t report to you the UN and PW that it uses when it sets up the database, these however can be found in wp-config.php file in the root of your directory.
wp-config.php file:
So if you want to use Fantastico you need to look for an ISP that supports it, generally the ones that allow you cPanel access. I use Hostgator but there are others, I’d welcome suggestions for other hosting providers, but please no affiliate links. (I reserve the right to remove any comments posted that contain affiliate links)
August 23rd, 2008 at 5:26 am
I have a fairly new Word Press blog that I used Fantastico to install. It is as easy to use as you say Ian! I use BlueHost and they do have cpanel which is a wonderful thing too. I don’t know much about html so I have lots of questions about tweaking my blog. I’m subscribing to your newsletter and hopefully some of my questions will be answered.