Footnotes

1. I actually have a slightly different configuration that what I’m describing here, because I’m forwarding HTTP traffic through my firewall/router to the windows server. I have a CNAME entry that maps to the associated DNS entry for my cable-modem connection (which changes very rarely), so I’m using another feature of IIS called “Host Header Values” to host multiple websites on the same IP address. It’s roughly equivalent to Apache’s Virtual Host configuration. Because I’m using a different Virtual Host, I’m also using Virtual Directories. The only advantages I can really see between that and using a “real subdirectory” for my WordPress install is that you can put the folder somewhere else. I did that so my wordpress files didn’t have to be buried in the wwwroot folder, which makes them a little easier to find and back-up, and you could theoretically locate them on another shared drive over the network. So it’s really just a file-system organization choice; if you compare the properties for a regular subdirectory (right-click one) versus a Virtual Directory, the only thing that’s different is really the active “Application Name” field. Applications are some kind of ASP/IIS concept that I don’t quite understand, so this might be more important than I realize.

2. To use MySQL Administrator, you need to connect to a database server (here called the “MySQL Server Instance”) with a username and a password. A dialog pops up for me that has the fields Server Host, User Name and Password. Use localhost, root, and the password you picked—I hope you wrote it down—when you first installed the MySQL binaries. Leave the Port value alone. You’ll get a big dialog window with a list of items on the left. To create the wordpress database, click the CATALOGS item. You’ll see a list of “Schemata” appear, with mysql and test already listed. These are the databases that MySQL already has installed. Leave them alone, but right-click one of the items (sigh…this hurts the UI designer in me) and choose CREATE NEW SCHEMA. This will be the database that WordPress will need to know about when you fill in the wp-config.php file. I called mine wordpress01, since I thought I might create multiple wordpress databases in the future. Next, you’ll have to create a database user that can access just the new database. So click USER ADMINISTRATION, and you’ll see a list of “User Accounts” appear. The “root” user is already in the system, but that user has access to EVERYTHING. We’re going to make a less privileged user, with access only to the wordpress01 database. Right-click the “root” user and choose ADD NEW USER. I know, it makes no sense to click an existing user to add new user, but trust me. You’ll have a new user literally named New User, and you can fill out the big pane on the right. Now, fill out the MySQL User and Password fields. Write this stuff down, because you’ll be plugging this also into wp-config.php later. Click the APPLY CHANGES button, and you’ll see the User Accounts field update. Almost done! Now right click the user you just created, and choose ADD HOST FROM WHICH THE USER CAN CONNECT. In the dialog box that appears, enter localhost. You’ll see this appear below your new user’s name. Now, left-click localhost, and in the window on the right click the SCHEMA PRIVILEGES tab. In the left-most subwindow (“Schemata”), click the wordpress01 database. Then, in the right-most subwindow (“Available Privileges”), click the << symbol to assign all privileges to your new user. APPLY CHANGES, and close MySQL Adminstrator. BTW, make sure you did left-click localhost and not the username; otherwise, you assign privs to a user that can connect from anywhere over the accessible network.

   If everything has gone to plan, you have created a new database called wordpress01, created a user that can connect to the MySQL database server from localhost. That’s enough, because in this example the web server and the database server are on the same machine.

3. In retrospect, this was somewhat easier than installing MySQL / PHP on my Linux box with Apache, what with all the extra library dependencies I had to resolve. And configuring Apache really sucks…I would hate to do that again. Though, it might not have been so bad if I didn’t use a text-based distro (Slackware, on a Pentium 166) and installed everything from source. And, it’s been a couple years since I’ve had to do it; perhaps installation on newer desktop Linux distros, with the newer package managers, are less painful than I remember. Without these newer Windows installers, WIMP would have been more of a pain in the butt.