To use Wordpress on your own site you need to create a database on the server. This is simple and takes about 10 minutes if everything is done correctly. I'll try to handle a few ways that the process can screw up and get you past that.

In essence, you log into the web site control panel, go to the mySQL page and create a database with a unique name, then you assign a new or existing user to the database and you are finished. All that does is tell the system to allocate space for the database, give it a name and tell it who is going to be using it.

Both Wordpress and Joomla have the same requirements so I will only talk about setting up a database for a Joomla installation unless the details are different.

This is complex but should work well if you are careful. HR (hostrocket) provides 10 databases per site. When you have 8 secondary sites you can easily use those up.

Before you install Joomla ( or wordpress) you need to create the database for that installation on the HR server. To create the database you go to the control panel for the top site. Say you have a top domain called http://www.mytopsite.com and under that you have several other domains.

• www.domain2.com
• www.domain3.com
• www.domain4.com

To create a database for any of these sites, you log into your control panel for the top site.

http://www.mytopsite.com/controlpanel

You will have to log into the control panel using the name and password given to you in the email you received after setting up the site.

On Host Rocket, you will see a control panel. Click on the image to see the entire page.

You can see on the large image that the mySQL database is accessed by the icon near the bottom.

A database is a software function on the website where most programs store their data. Joomla and Wordpress use a database to store content ( your text ) emails and configuration variables.

The next page you see is the mySQL Database Manager page. There you will setup or delete databases as needed.

Click on this small image to see the full size page.

This page is where you create a new database for your website ( either Joomla or Wordpress )

One data base is shown in the picture. This is the database for this site. I've marked out the user name because that data is not needed by the public and will change to your own username and password.

Below that existing database record, you can see the "Create Database" button. Give the database a name you will remember or associate with the site. When you have 9 databases it is hard to remember which is which unless the names make sense.

Once you have created the database, you need to assign a user name to the database. All requests for data will need this username and password. If you already have a user shown, then you can use that username as long as you know the password that is associated with the user name. When you create a user, you assign a password at that time and then assign the user to a database. Then that user , with that password, can access and use the database.

So create a new user if you don't have one already. Give the user a good password. Once that user exists, then assign it to the database.

After this, when the software talks to the database it will always have to use a valid pair ( name and password ).

So, at this point, we have a database, a user name and an associated password. We will use the database name, the user name and the password when we install Joomla or Wordpress. They both need those three pieces of information during the installation of the web site.

One issue you should be aware of, when you create a database or a user, HostRocket will add a prefix to the name automatically. That prefix is usually the first seven letters of the website name. Followed by an underline, THEN the name you gave it. So if your site is www.coolbird.com and you created a database called joomStuff then HR will actually create a database named coolbir_joomStuff . Just be careful to see what they actually create and use that when you install Joomal or Wordpress.