The complete guide to my web development platform

Hello WordPress enthusiasts, this is how I setup myself to develop WordPress sites on my Media Temple (dv) Dedicated Virtual Server.

You will need the following:

• A budget of $50/month for a Dedicated Virtual Server from Media Temple
• A domain which you can purchase from Media Temple (see forwarding for other domain hosting services)
• Windows 7 or Mac OSX
• The latest WordPress release
• The ability to go to websites and follow tutorials and instructions above and beyond what’s here

If you have never developed a website before, or you are a novice and you are only looking to get one site up, I highly recommend you start with Media Temple (gs) to get started. I run multiple sites that sometimes require elements that the (gs) cant handle, so I use the Media Temple (dv) Dedicated Virtual Server to host all of my sites. It runs flawlessly and is very easy to use. Media Temple has an excellent knowledge base that I recommend you throughly look though before purchasing anything.

Domains are $15/year with Media Temple which is completely fair in my opinion and only a fraction of the cost of running the server. You can either purchase or transfer a domain from another domain hosting services such as godaddy.com or networksolutions.com, but I don’t care to much for their servers so I purchase direct.

Up to this point you can handle either online or over the phone with their sales support. Media Temple tech support is top notch and I have never had an issue with them. This is also because I don’t ask them stupid questions that I can look up myself. Actually, that’s the basic rule for anything in when it comes to technical support.

Now that you have your domain and server setup, you should have a media temple temporary page that is waiting to be replaced. Now depending on your operating system, it’s time to get your web development platform up and running.

The Media Temple Admin Server Guide is now your best friend. Here you will find all of your server information that most of the following programs will need.

Suggested Web Development Platforms:

• For Windows, I suggest using NotePad++, Filezilla, Firefox, and Firebug.
• For Mac OSx, I suggest using Coda, Firefox and Firebug.

File synchronization helps tremendously by cutting down the time it takes to chase files down and you can easily find how to do that Coda site. With Filezilla, I had to setup my default local directory, default remote directory (typically it’s httdocs/) and check “Use synchronized browsing”. I also usually have a window open to my local directory so I can open my files in NotePad++.

Now you can download the latest WordPress release to your local directory. When you unzip WordPress, it will be in a sub-folder of “wordpress”. You need to take all of those files in “wordpress” and place them in your local directory and then delete the “wordpress” folder and zip file. Now you will need to upload all of those files to your server by navigating to your local directory folder in either Coda or Filezilla.

Important: You must change the folder permissions of httpdocs/ to 777 in order to allow WordPress to modify these folders and create it’s configuration files.

Next you will then need to go into your Plesk from the Media Temple admin and setup a new database under your domain. When you go to your domain now you should see the WordPress Setup guide which will ask for your database information.

The WordPress installation procedure is pretty straight forward. I suggest immediately changing your site title, description, about page, post and comments so you don’t look like a newb.

That’s it. If you have followed these steps, you should be where I am at with this site (as of this post of course). I like this platform because it’s fast, easy and relatively quick to get setup. From here you can start modifying WordPress as you like.