Many website hosting companies have an option to one-click install WordPress, this makes it easy for many people to have WordPress on their website. Each website hosting company has their own setup options, so make sure to look into the help section of your hosting company and find out what things you need to do in order to have WordPress installed. Using the one-click install will save you time, and make it easier to have a WordPress site up and running. But, there are many reasons why you may not want to do this option,
By default one-click WordPress installs tend to install at least another theme and a couple of plugins, website hosting companies say they do this to make it easier for people who are brand new to WordPress to easily get their own site up without having to try and figure out and find plugins. These themes or plugins may not be want you want so if you choose a one-click install then you will have to spend the time removing those.
The one-click install may also change some WordPress settings that you don’t want changed, which would require you to spend the time going into each settings option and seeing what the option is, then changing it to what you want. You could say you would do this anyways if you install WordPress yourself, some options when installing yourself allow you to set the settings you want.
One-Click install may install an old version of WordPress, this means you have to go in and update it yourself if you want the latest version. When you install WordPress yourself you will get the latest version. WordPress will prompt to you install the latest version if you don’t have it and if you can’t update for some reason there are ways to fix it or you can contact your hosting company for help.
If you choose one-click install you may not be able to choose the username or password, unless you want to go in and try to change it yourself. This is good for people who just want to get right into a WordPress site, but is bad for security because if the hosting company uses the same password across all their one-click installs then it would be easy for hackers to hack into those websites. Even if the username is slightly different then the hackers can figure out the username very quickly. Some one-click installs allow you to change the username (or password) after everything is setup, but some don’t. If you want to be able to fully change your username or password then don’t choose one-click install.
Some one-click installs also send the username and password to your email, which is nice so you can write it down in a password manager, but this isn’t ideal if you share the email account with someone else, you don’t have access to your email at that time, or you don’t fully trust your email provider (if you are interested in finding an email provider that doesn’t sell what’s in your email for money then you can read some guidance at greycoder.com).
Having WordPress on a subdomain or in a different folder sometimes referred to as subdirectory (/blog for example) can be more difficult to setup if you use one-click install. Some hosting companies make it easy but some simply don’t allow it. If you want this flexibility then you should setup WordPress yourself.
One-Click WordPress installs are famously known to take only one-click but more and more of these installs take a couple of clicks and a couple of steps. Sometimes these one-click installs take more time and steps then if you were to install WordPress yourself. In fact you can somewhat automate the WordPress and plugins install if you are willing to set it up before hand and are willing to install WordPress yourself. You can find out more how to do this at WPKube.
Lastly, when you trust the hosting company to install WordPress for you (by using the one-click install) you trust them not to make changes on the server that could negatively affect your website. Some companies do change things for the better and to make your site faster, but some companies just change things because they think it would be good when in fact it makes the site worst off. Many of these things can be changed, it is strongly suggested to get someone (like myself) who is experienced in changing these settings to know what settings to change so it won’t break your website.
Now that you know why you may or may not want to use a one-click install, there is the option of installing WordPress yourself. This is recommended for people who want more options and want to know what goes on behind the scenes of setting up WordPress. WordPress.org actually has steps (both basic and detailed) on how to install WordPress yourself so I would suggest following their guide over at wordpress.org/support.
Did you do one-click WordPress install or decide to install WordPress yourself? Let us know on social media and include your reason(s) why. Just want someone to install and setup your WordPress website for you? We can do that for you.
