Install WordPress Blog on Existing Website

There are many reasons why you might want to install a WordPress blog on your existing website and it is a pretty straightforward job and it does not take much effort. If you are familiar with the content management system, you can easily set up a new WordPress as your blog and just link it to your main site.

How to Install WordPress on an Existing Website

Adding a WordPress installation to your existing website can be easily achieved by creating a new fresh installation to a subdirectory or subdomain. With that being said, examples of what your website’s URL could look like is yoursite.com/blog or blog.yourwebsite.com.

Looking at that question from a functional approach, they both work just the same and there is not a difference that you should be concerned about. Neither for the user experience nor for Google.

Install WordPress on Subdomain

Installing WordPress on a subdomain is a regular process. It is usually simple because most of the hosting companies offer WordPress installer in their hosting plans.

To install WordPress on a subdomain, go to your hosting account, then check for something like “Add Domain” or “Add New Domain Name“, it is different in the different hosting providers. When you find it, click on it and pick a proper name for your subdomain.
After your subdomain is ready, you can install WordPress through your panel. All you have to do is to simply go to the Installations tab in your hosting dashboard, choose the “Add install” option and you will be able to install your WordPress on your subdomain.

Install WordPress in Subdirectory

The installation of WordPress in a subdirectory might vary a lot depending on your hosting provider. However, in most cases the following approach should work.
Go to your File Manager (this can be found in your cPanel), click on it and then look for a folder named ‘public_html’. Open it and create a new folder. This is the folder that you are going to install WordPress in.

Next, go to WordPress.org and download the last WordPress release. The file should be in a .zip file. When the download is completed, open the new folder that you’ve just created a moment ago and upload your wordpress.zip file.
Click on it and hit the ‘extract’ button.

Once your extract is done you are almost ready, but you will have a slight problem. Your WordPress installation will now open in yourdomain.com/new-directory/WordPress.
To fix this issue, simply go inside your WordPress folder, select all of its content, and use the move button to move all of its files directly to your desired folder.

Configuring the Database

There are only two more things left to do. Go to your MySQL databases, and you should create a new database for your new WordPress installation.

Tip:

How To Check if a Website Is Using WordPress?

The easiest way to find if a web site is based on WordPress CMS is to use our Check WordPress Tool that can do this work for you. You will be able to analyse any competitor site and understand what plugins and theme its use.