The Most Common Problems Experienced by WordPress Installers

Posted by Alex on 06 02 2017.

Although it is very easy to get and install WordPress via and for cPanel, sometimes, something goes wrong during the installation procedure. The WordPress site has a more in-depth documentation for such problems, but the ones discussed in this article are the most frequently experienced ones.

Trouble with the install script

Sometimes, you will have problems with the install script itself. In this case, you will get an error message regarding the database. It depends on which part of the installation you made a mistake on, but the most common solutions include the following:

1. Check the database information you entered, and make sure you have all the correct data in the wp-config.php.
2. Ensure that you have given the WordPress user permission for accessing your WordPress database, which is one of the sub-steps under Step 3 of the WordPress installation procedure.
3. Make certain that the database server is up and running, and that no problems have ensued.

Seeing directory listings instead of webpages

You need to dictate your web server requires viewing the index.php as default. When you use Apache, make sure you implement the directive DirectoryIndex index.php. Another way, which many users find the easiest, is the creation of a file they name .htaccess, and store the directive there. You can also include the directive to the config files of your web server.

Numerous headers already sending errors

The most likely cause of this issue is the introduction of a syntax error while you edited the wp-config.php.

To resolve this issue, follow these steps:

1. Just in case you do not have shell access, you can just simple download wp-config.php.
2. Once you have downloaded it, use a text editor to open the file.
3. Look at the first line. It should only contain “<?php,” (without the quotation marks) and nothing else, even a simple whitespace.
4. Take a look at the last line and make sure that it only has “?>,” (do not include the quotation marks) and nothing else.
5. When you save it as Unicode, ensure that the text editor does not add any byte order mark (BOM). In the event it does, use another text editor.
6. Save and re-upload it. Try reloading the page in your preferred browser and see if the headers still send out errors.

Web pages show up as gibberish and it contains a lot of “<?php ?>” tags

This happens when the <?php ?> tags are sent to the browser, meaning the PHP you currently use is improperly working. Before a server sends the proper HTML to a web browser, execution of the PHP code should come first. This is actually the reason people call it a preprocessor.

To correct this, try checking your web server first and ensuring it meets all the prerequisites of installing and operating WordPress. You should also make sure that you have PHP properly installed and set up. In the event that you still cannot resolve this issue, contact the support department of your web hosting service provider.