By Jeffro on August 13, 2010
HostGator who I know a lot of you use for hosting WordPress powered websites now has a new toy for you to play with that makes installing WordPress quick and easy with no uploading required. It’s called QuickInstall and is a custom developed script by HostGator that performs practically the same functionality as Fantastico. However, the major difference between Fantastico and this custom script is that there is little to no delay between software update roll outs.
For example when WordPress 3.0 was released, it was updated and ready to be installed within the software library within a few hours compared to days with Fantastico. Is this the end of Fantastico dominance amongst the various webhosting providers out there? It seems like each host is coming up with their own custom script installer, mostly in light of the delays introduced with Fantastico. If you use a host other than HostGator and notice they have a custom script installer, let me know about it in the comments.
Posted in News | Tagged hosting, install, scripts, wordpress |
By Jeffro on March 1, 2010
For as long as I can remember, Fantastico has been the most popular form of auto installing WordPress without having to mess with the hassle of uploading files and configuring WP-Config. However, I logged into my cPanel account the other day and noticed a long message from AnHosting.
We’re glad to announce availability of a new tool to help install software on your account: Softaculous – Instant Installs! Softaculous has replaced Fantastico in your account, providing more software for automatic installation and upgrade. New features are available including a user-feedback rating system, software demonstrations, and more. Softaculous currently offers 131 applications and scripts for quick, easy installation, with more arriving every day.
The good news, at least for those with AnHosting accounts is that any installs of WordPress that were performed with Fantastico have already transitioned to Softaculous. Softaculous has a new interface for installing scripts than what I’m used to with Fantastico. The list of scripts is on the left hand side but there are icons in the top right portion of the screen with a center column dedicated to content related to the scripts. One of the biggest differences for me is that I’m now able to automatically install WordPress MU.
How the merging of WordPress MU into WordPress will affect these auto installs is beyond me. I’m sure it won’t be that hard of an upgrade path. The other interesting thing I noticed is that this script installer is that each script has a rating as well as reviews by end users. WordPress 2.9.2 has a rating of 4.75. The reviews I read were short and sweet despite having 500 characters to work with.
I was a little disheartened to see that WordPress was filed under the Blog category and not the Portal/CMS category but it’s nothing to worry about. Softaculous provides the same easy script installation routine that Fantastico users were familiar with, so don’t be alarmed if you see this show up in a control panel near you.
Posted in News | Tagged fantastico, install, Softaculous, wordpress |
By Jeffro on September 28, 2009
On the WordPress Hackers Mailing list, Ptah Dunbar recently proposed an idea that I think is pretty cool and would be a time saver for developers and custom installers called Installation Profiles.
Installation profiles could automatically pre configure WordPress with a set of activated plugins, change the default activated theme and could also possibly change/add some default settings/content?–all during the install process. This could be beneficial to a lot of users/developers allowing them to jump right into content creation instead of site configuration.
Users could create a profile that contains all their settings and activated plugins they’d usually have to configure after installing WP. The profile that they create could also be used across all their blogs–saving a lot of time.
I’m thinking something along the lines of being able to export my blogs configuration into an XML file just like you can with blog content into a WordPress eXtended RSS file. I use the same settings for each WordPress install I do and since I occasionally reformat my WordPress powered sites, it would be an awesome time saver to just upload an XML file and have my site setup the way it was before the reformat took place. Of course, there are other uses for install profiles so implementing an extensible way of creating them would be a good idea. What do you think of the idea?
So far, the closest thing we have to installation profiles is DD32′s newest project, WordPressQI or WordPress Quick Install which provides options to change the pre-installed plugins that are installed along with WordPress as well as configuring permalink settings up front.
Posted in WordPress | Tagged install, profiles, ptah dunbar, wordpress |
