How to Install WordPress on HostGator – Step by Step (2021)

Hi guys, it’s Martie here from letsbuildwp.com, and in this video we’re going to be covering how to install WordPress on HostGator web hosting in 2021. Now, I know I only posted a video showing how to do this a little while back, but since then they’ve made a major change to some of the steps. Okay, so to install WordPress on hostgator, we first just need to setup a HostGator account. If you’ve already got an account, and just want to
know how to install WordPress, you can skip ahead to the time on screen now. Then for everyone else, we’re going to open up our internet browser, and go to hostgator.com. Or, alternatively you can click the link in the description below, and that’s going to open it up in a new tab. But either way, once we get here we’re just going to hover over “Hosting” at the top, and click “Shared Hosting”. And that’s going to show use the 3
different hosting plans they offer. Now, to be totally honest will you, the “Business Plan” comes with a whole load of added extras you’re probably not going need when just getting started. Which really just leaves it between the “Hatchling Plan” and the “Baby Plan”. And the only real difference between these 2 plans is the amount of websites we can have on each one. So, with the “Hatchling Plan” we can have one single website.
And with the “Baby Plan” we can have as many websites as we like. Then, once we’ve decided on which hosting plan we’re going to go for, we can just click “Buy Now!” underneath. That’s going to bring us here, and this is where we can register the domain name for our new WordPress site. So we just need to type our domain name into this box. And for this example, I’m going to type “a blog about coffee”. Then, we can choose our
domain extension using this drop-down on the right, and I’m going to choose .com. So in this example, my domain’s going to be ablogaboutcoffee.com. Then as long as it’s available for us to register, it’s going to say “Primary Domain” here. But if it comes up and says it’s not available, unfortunately we’ll need to choose something else. Then once we’ve chose our domain name, and we know it’s available. We just need to scroll
down, to where it says “Domain Privacy Protection”. Now, this is a totally optional add on, and I normally just uncheck this box myself. But if you want to keep your WordPress site totally anonymous, just leave the box checked and it’ll be added to your bill. Then under this, it says “Choose a Hosting Plan” and here we just want to make sure our “Package Type” is correct, and choose a “Billing Cycle”. So, I went for the
Hatchling Plan in this example, so this is correct. And then on the right, we can choose how often we’d like to pay for our hosting So we can pay for it once a month, once a year, or we can even pay for it every 3 years if we like. Now we do save quite a bit of money the longer we buy at one time, so that might be something to think about. But as I’m just doing this for the tutorial, I’m going to set mine to monthly. Then under this, we
need to enter our email address, and create a password and security pin for our account. And then under this, we just need to enter our personal billing information, so things like our name and address. And then on the right we can choose how we’d like to pay for our order, and I’m going to go for PayPal. Then once we’re done here, if we scroll down, we’ll see it says “Add Additional Services”, and these are just some paid extras that
HostGator offer. I normally just uncheck these boxes myself, but you can have a read through them, and if you want any, just check the box and they’ll be added to your bill. Then under this, it says “Enter a Coupon Code”. And there might already be a coupon entered in here, worth 20% or 25% off. But if we just delete these, and instead enter “WORDPRESS1HOST”. So that’s “WORDPRESS”, then the number 1, and then the word “HOST”.
When we click validate, and scroll down. We’ll see that we’re now getting our first month hosting for only one penny! Now I would like to quickly point out here, that as well as you getting an amazing discount on your hosting, I’ll also be paid a small commission from HostGator, if you use my coupon or make a purchase through my link. This won’t cost you anything extra, and any money made will be put towards making more free tutorials
like this one. But anyway, let’s get back to installing WordPress. So if we look here, we can also see that HostGator offer 24/7 phone and live chat support for free. And they also have a 45 day money back guarantee. Then once we’re happy with everything here, we just need to check the box to agree to their terms. And then click “Checkout Now!”. So I’m just going to pause this video, while I fill out my personal information above and
then I’ll restart it. So if you’re following along at home, just pause this video while you’re doing the same, and then come back and press play and we can install WordPress together. Okay, so that’s me now back, and when I finished paying for my order, I was brought to a page saying thank you, and then redirected to the homepage. So if you’re following along at home, at this point we can close out of HostGator, and instead we want to
open our email inbox, where we should find some new emails from HostGator. These emails contain some pretty important information, so we should keep them safe, but for now, we’re going to click into the email that says “Your Account Info”. And in this email we’ll see we have a link to our control panel, which is also knows as the cPanel. Our username and password for logging in, and some other information about our account. Here, we’re
going to click the link to our Control Panel, which is going to open up the cPanel login screen in a new tab. And now we just need to copy and paste our username and password from this email, into the cPanel login screen. Then once we’ve got them pasted in, we can click login, and this is us going to be logging into the HostGator cPanel, which is where we’ll be installing WordPress. All we need to do is scroll down, to where it says
“Software”. And then click “WordPress Manager”. Then we need to click “Install”. And this is going to open up the WordPress setup screen. Then, here we’re just going to change this box labelled protocol, from HTTPS to HTTP. And then make sure our new domain name is selected in the box beside it. Then, we can scroll down, and here we can change our site title and tagline using these 2 boxes. So, I’m going to type “Coffee Blog”
as my site title. And then for my tagline, I’m going to put “A blog all about coffee!”. Then under this, we can create the username and password we want to use for logging into our site. And then we can update our email address under this. Then once we’re done here, we can change the language of our site if we need to, but I’m going to leave mine on english. Then we can skip over the optional plugins and themes they offer, as we can
always install these later. Or if you do want them, just check the box beside any plugins you want installed, and choose your theme. And then finally, we just need to click Install at the bottom, and Hostgator will start installing WordPress. This will usually take less than a minute. And once it’s finished, it’ll say “Congratulations, the software was installed”. At this point, we can click the link beside where it says “Admin URL”.
Which will open up the WordPress dashboard in a new tab. And this is where we can add any content, or make any changes to our new WordPress site. Which by the way, is now LIVE online. All we need to do to visit our new site, is click our site title in the top-left. And that’s going to show us what WordPress looks like when we first install it. Now sometimes they change the up default theme, so even if you didn’t choose one during the
installation, yours might look a little different than mine. But either way, it’s just going to be some demo content and not much else. But it’s ready for us to start customising, and adding content to. And then to get back to the dashboard, we just need to click our site title again in the top left. So, that’s us now at the end of this video, and that was how to install WordPress on Hostgator web hosting. I really hope you found it
helpful, and if you did please give it a like here on YouTube to show your support, and consider subscribing to the channel for more WordPress tutorials in future. And one last thing, if you want me to show you some of the basics of WordPress now you have it installed. Just click the link on screen now to visit the playlist. Once again, my name is Martie from letsbuildwp.com, and thank you very much for watching my video.