How to install WordPress using Softaculous
Once you order hosting service, you can start creating your own website. Using Softaculous automatic app installer you can install WordPress in a few clicks.
Below you can find step-by-step guidelines covering the process:
1. Log into your cPanel.
2. Navigate to Exclusive for Namecheap customers section > Softaculous Apps Installer menu:
3. On the homepage, click on the WordPress icon:
4. Switch to the Install tab to proceed:
5. On the next page you will need to fill out the details of your WordPress installation.
- Choose the domain you wish to install WordPress for
- In the In Directory field you can specify the root folder for WordPress installation. By default, this field is empty, and it allows installing WordPress on yourdomain.com directly. If you wish to install it to a subfolder, like yourdomain.com/blog, simply type “blog” in this field.
- Database Name can be left default.
- Table Prefix can also be left default wp_; however, due to security reasons it is better to change it, e.g., to ncwpsite_ .
- The Site Settings section should be filled out accordingly to your needs, though you can change it anytime later if required.
Make sure you set up secure and hard-to guess details in the Admin Account section:
6. When ready, scroll down and hit Install.
In a few moments you will see the message that WordPress has been successfully installed:
You can now go ahead and log into your WordPress Dashboard to start working on your website.
allows publishing your posts.
Google Apps: with this tool you will be able to configure Google Apps service for your domain in just a few clicks. Feel free to check 
Namecheap SSL: this menu allows you to use Namecheap SSL cPanel plugin, check 
CodeGuard Backup: this tool was designed to make the backup process as easy as possible. CodeGuard system will constantly monitor the website and keep you informed of any changes, performing full automatic backups of your files to avoid any possible downtime. More information is provided in the following articles:
Softaculous Apps Installer: this feature allows you to use Softaculous Script Installer, which includes most popular CMS, such as WordPress/Joomla/Magento etc. It is much faster than other script installers and it installs CMSes in a few clicks. Softaculous application is provided with any cPanel account on all of our shared hosting plans. You can view available scripts and their demo 
Website Builder: this tool allows you to easily create an entire website using a drag-and-drop editor and without knowing any code or installing special software.
Contact Support: opens a Live Chat with our customer support team.
Namecheap Knowledgebase: this button will take you to our Knowledgebase site section.
File Manager: here you can manage the files stored in your account. These guides can be found helpful while working with this menu:
Images: this tool allows you to view and modify images in your account.
Directory Privacy: allows you to set a requirement for a username and password when users attempt to access your site from the web. It can be used when you need to limit access to a certain part of your site. You can get more details in 
Disk Usage: in this menu you will be able to check a detailed information about the disk space usage of your account. It shows disk usage totals for your account’s directories and all of its databases, not for individual files or databases. More details about Disk Space usage optimization are provided in 
Web Disk: this feature is a cPanel implementation of the WebDav protocol, which allows you to manage, upload, and download your website’s files as though they were local to your personal computer. More detailed instructions about setting up WebDisk can be found in these articles:
FTP Accounts: this option allows you to create and manage your FTP accounts. In order to create an FTP account, feel free to check 
FTP Connections: using this tool you can monitor the users who are currently logged into your site via FTP. Also, it’s possible to terminate an FTP connection from here.
Backup: this feature allows you to download a zipped copy of your entire account or specific parts of it, such as your home directory, databases, email forwarder configuration, or your email filters configuration. More details guidance about how to make backups in cPanel can be found 
Backup Wizard: a user-friendly interface for creating a backup of your entire site, a partial backup, or allowing a site restoration from the last backup saved. Note, that Restore option provided in this menu is disabled by default on all our shared servers.
Inodes Usage: provides the statistics of your account inodes (files) usage.You will find more details about this tool 
phpMyAdmin: it’s the database management tool, which allows you to make different changes to MySQL databases in your account. You can find more information about how to work with databases via phpMyAdmin 
MySQL Databases: in this menu you can create and manage MySQL databases in cPanel account. You can refer to 
MySQL Databases Wizard: provides the same functionality as MySQL Databases menu, in a simplified way though.
PostgreSQL Databases: this option allows you to create and manage PostgreSQL databases in cPanel.
PostgreSQL Databases Wizard: has the same functionality as PostgreSQL Databases menu, but allows to make all the changes in a simpler way.
phpPgAdmin: it is the database management tool, which allows you to make different changes to PostgreSQL databases in your account.
Email Accounts: in this menu you can create and manage mailboxes associated with the domain names hosted in your account. In order to create an email account, feel free to check 
Forwarders: setting up Forwarders feature provides you with an opportunity to send a copy of all emails from one email address to another. For example, you have two different email accounts and you don’t want to check both of them every time, so you could forward emails from test@yourdomain.com to test2@yourdomain2.com. Note, that the original address will still receive the forwarded emails.
Email Routing: here you can set email routing for the domains hosted in your cPanel account, more details can be found in 
Autoresponders: this feature allows you to automatically send messages in reply to incoming emails received on a specific email account. This is pretty useful when you are on holidays or unavailable, or if you have any generic messages to send. You will find more information in 
Default Address: in this menu you can manage an email address, which is used by cPanel to fetch any message sent to email accounts which do not exist at your domain (also known as ‘catch-all address’). More details can be found 
Mailing Lists: with this option you can create a single address to send emails, newsletters and other updates to multiple email addresses simultaneously. Feel free to refer to 
Track Delivery: this menu allows you to monitor emails delivery for your account.
Global Email Filters: this feature allows you to configure filters of all the emails arriving to your hosted domains.
Email Filters: with this option you can create filters for each email account for your domain. You can find more details about filtering tools in 
Authentication: this tool will help you to prevent spam. Setting up DKIM and SPF records for your account equip email messages with verifiable information so that your server can automatically detect the nature of incoming and outgoing messages. The detailed guidance about using this feature can be found 
Address Importer: this menu allows you to use two types of files (.xls and .csv) for importing data in order to simultaneously create multiple email address or email forwarders for your account.
Spam Filters: it is a user-friendly email utility which examines incoming mail for different spam characteristics. It uses various network tests and spam filtering to get an overall score in order to decide whether the mail should be considered as spam or not. SpamAssassin tool is provided by default with all our shared and reseller hosting plans. These articles can be found useful for setting up SpamAssasin feature:
Encryption: this option allows you to set up GnuPG, which is a publicly-available encryption scheme that uses the public key approach. This system uses a public key to encrypt messages and you can decrypt them with the private key, which the intended recipient of the message retains.
BoxTrapper: this tool can protect your Inbox from spam by requiring all email senders not on your Whitelist reply to a verification email before you can receive their mail.
Calendars and Contacts: this menu helps to configure your client to connect to CalDAV for calendars and CardDAV for contacts in order to access them on your personal devices. The detailed instructions can be found in 
Email Disk Usage: this utility allows you to recover disk space by deleting old messages from your mailbox.
Professional Spam Filter: this menu allows you to configure SpamExperts, a user-friendly email filtering solution that allows to protect your account from both incoming and outgoing spam. More information about this feature is provided in 
Site Publisher: you can use this interface to quickly create a website from a set of available templates. This allows visitors to see some basic information while you continue to develop your website.
Addon Domains: with the help of this menu you can add more domains to the hosting account. Addon domains have the same functionality as the main domain assigned to your hosting account. More details about adding domains to cPanel are provided 
Subdomains: in this menu you can create subdomains and point them to different sections of your website or other IPs. Detailed instructions about this menu can be found in 
Aliases: this feature allows you to ‘park’ additional domain names to your existing hosting account. They display the same website as your primary domain and share web statistics as well. You can refer to 
Redirects: here you can create a redirect for a specific domain/page to another domain/page and display the contents of the latter. More details can be found 
Zone Editor: allows you to edit the DNS zone of the domain(s) in your cPanel account. The following records can be added: A, AAAA, CNAME, SRV, TXT, MX. Feel free to check 
Visitors: the access log of your account provided in a table view.
Errors: here you can check the error log for your account, showing the latest 300 lines of content related to the errors generated by any website hosted in your account.
Bandwidth: provides you with the detailed information the bandwidth used by your account.
Raw Access: the RAW access log for your account.
Awstats: this tool provides you with an opportunity to monitor the access indexes on your account – users, robots, accessed pages and many, many more. You will find a more detailed explanation in 
CPU and Concurrent Connection Usage: shows information on the resources consumed by your account. You can find some additional information on resource usage in 
SSH Access: here you can generate an access key for your account in order to connect using SSH keys. More details about setting up SSH keys can be found in 
IP Blocker: with the help of this tool you can block a range of IP addresses to prevent them from accessing your site. Feel free to refer to 
SSL/TLS: this tool will help you to install and manage your SSL Certificates. You will find a more detailed guide 
Hotlink Protection: in this menu you can enable hotlink protection for your website (that is to prevent someone from direct linking of your images to another website and, as a result, consuming your hosting account bandwidth). Feel free to check 
Leech Protection: allows you to control whether users can give out or publicly post their passwords for restricted areas of your site. It can be used to redirect compromised accounts to the URL of your choice, or suspend them.
SSL/TLS Status: use this interface to view the SSL status of your domains.
Two-Factor Authentication: this tool lets you enable 2FA, an improved security measure that requires two forms of identification: your password and a generated security code. When 2FA is enabled, an app on your smartphone supplies a code you must enter with your password to log in. You can learn more about enabling 2FA 
PHP: here you can check PHP configuration settings. They cannot be customized via this menu. The system displays them for your reference only. In case you need to change PHP settings, feel free to check following articles:
PHP PEAR Packages: this options allows you to install and maintain PHP PEAR packages for your hosting account.
Perl Modules: here you can manage Perl modules available for your account. A Perl module is a discrete component of software for the Perl programming language. Perl is supported on all of our shared/reseller servers. 
RubyGems: in this menu you will find the set of functions that allow you to perform tasks in Ruby. It’s needed to install a Gem before you can use it inside a Ruby program.
Ruby on Rails: with this menu you can use Ruby on Rails features. Ruby on Rails is a free web application framework for the Ruby programming language. It is often referred to as ‘Rails’ or ‘RoR’. We support RoR with our Stellar Plus, Stellar Business and Reseller packages (and old Professional, Ultimate, Business SSD, Reseller packages). The following versions are working on our servers: Ruby – 1.8.7, Rails – 2.3.18. More information can be found in 
Optimize Website: this feature allows you to enable/disable and configure the compression of your website by tweaking the way Apache handles requests, which can increase the performance of your website.
Select PHP Version: here you can change PHP version applied to your cPanel account. You can find more information in 
Cron Jobs: here you can set up scripts running on a scheduled basis. For more details about setting up CronJobs refer to 
Indexes: in this menu you can customize the way in which visitors can view a directory on the web.
Error Pages: this feature allows you to edit the code for the default errors pages your website can display.
Apache Handlers: here you can configure different Apache handlers for dealing with certain file formats.
MIME Types: provides you with the information about the system predefined MIME types and the option to add a MIME Type on your own.
Virus Scanner: this tool will allow you to scan your account for viruses with ClamAV virus scanner. ClamAV is an open source (GPL) anti-virus engine used in a variety of situations including email scanning, web scanning, and end point security. It provides a number of utilities including a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner and an advanced tool for automatic database updates.
Password and Security: this menu allows you to change your cPanel main password if know the original one. Otherwise, you can reset the password following the steps in 
Change Language: this feature provides you with an opportunity to change your cPanel interface language.
Change style: here you can change the overall look and feel of the interface by selecting one of the several preinstalled styles.
Contact Information: in this menu you can specify an email address that will receive system email notifications.
User Manager: allows you to manage your Subaccounts. Subaccounts use the same login and password information for email, FTP, and Web Disk.
Password & Security: this menu allows you to change your cPanel main password if know the original one. Otherwise, you can reset the password following the steps in 
Change Language: this feature provides you with an opportunity to change your cPanel interface language.
Change style: here you can change the overall look and feel of the interface by selecting one of the several preinstalled styles.
Contact Information: in this menu you can specify an email address that will receive system email notifications.
User Manager: allows you to manage your Subaccounts. Subaccounts use the same login and password information for email, FTP, and Web Disk.
Email Accounts: in this menu you can create and manage mailboxes associated with the domain names hosted in your account. In order to create an email account, feel free to check 
Forwarders: setting up Forwarders feature provides you with an opportunity to send a copy of all emails from one email address to another. For example, you have two different email accounts and you don’t want to check both of them every time, so you could forward emails from test@yourdomain.com to test2@yourdomain2.com. Note, that the original address will still receive the forwarded emails.
Email Routing: here you can set email routing for the domains hosted in your cPanel account, more details can be found in 
Autoresponders: this feature allows you to automatically send messages in reply to incoming emails received on a specific email account. This is pretty useful when you are on holidays or unavailable, or if you have any generic messages to send. You will find more information in 
Default Address: in this menu you can manage an email address, which is used by cPanel to fetch any message sent to email accounts which do not exist at your domain (also known as ‘catch-all address’). More details can be found 
Mailing Lists: with this option you can create a single address to send emails, newsletters and other updates to multiple email addresses simultaneously. Feel free to refer to 
Track Delivery: this menu allows you to monitor emails delivery for your account.
Global Email Filters: this feature allows you to configure filters of all the emails arriving to your hosted domains.
Email Filters: with this option you can create filters for each email account for your domain. You can find more details about filtering tools in 
Authentication: this tool will help you to prevent spam. Setting up DKIM and SPF records for your account equip email messages with verifiable information so that your server can automatically detect the nature of incoming and outgoing messages. The detailed guidance about using this feature can be found 
Address Importer: this menu allows you to use two types of files (.xls and .csv) for importing data in order to simultaneously create multiple email address or email forwarders for your account.
Spam Filters: it is a user-friendly email utility which examines incoming mail for different spam characteristics. It uses various network tests and spam filtering to get an overall score in order to decide whether the mail should be considered as spam or not. SpamAssassin tool is provided by default with all our shared and reseller hosting plans. These articles can be found useful for setting up SpamAssasin feature:
Encryption: this option allows you to set up GnuPG, which is a publicly-available encryption scheme that uses the public key approach. This system uses a public key to encrypt messages and you can decrypt them with the private key, which the intended recipient of the message retains.
BoxTrapper: this tool can protect your Inbox from spam by requiring all email senders not on your Whitelist reply to a verification email before you can receive their mail.
Calendars and Contacts: this menu helps to configure your client to connect to CalDAV for calendars and CardDAV for contacts in order to access them on your personal devices. The detailed instructions can be found in 
Email Disk Usage: this utility allows you to recover disk space by deleting old messages from your mailbox.
Professional Spam Filter: this menu allows you to configure SpamExperts, a user-friendly email filtering solution that allows to protect your account from both incoming and outgoing spam. More information about this feature is provided in 
Site Publisher: you can use this interface to quickly create a website from a set of available templates. This allows visitors to see some basic information while you continue to develop your website.
Addon Domains: with the help of this menu you can add more domains to the hosting account. Addon domains have the same functionality as the main domain assigned to your hosting account. More details about adding domains to cPanel are provided 
Subdomains: in this menu you can create subdomains and point them to different sections of your website or other IPs. Detailed instructions about this menu can be found in 
Redirects: here you can create a redirect for a specific domain/page to another domain/page and display the contents of the latter. More details can be found 
Zone Editor: allows you to edit the DNS zone of the domain(s) in your cPanel account. The following records can be added: A record, AAAA record, CNAME record, SRV record, TXT record. Feel free to check 
File Manager: here you can manage the files stored in your account. These guides can be found helpful while working with this menu:
Images: this tool allows you to view and modify images in your account.
Directory Privacy: allows you to set a requirement for a username and password when users attempt to access your site from the web. It can be used when you need to limit access to a certain part of your site. You can get more details in 
Disk Usage: in this menu you will be able to check a detailed information about the disk space usage of your account. It shows disk usage totals for your account’s directories and all of its databases, not for individual files or databases. More details about Disk Space usage optimization are provided in 
Web Disk: this feature is a cPanel implementation of the WebDav protocol, which allows you to manage, upload, and download your website’s files as though they were local to your personal computer. More detailed instructions about setting up WebDisk can be found in these articles:
FTP Accounts: this option allows you to create and manage your FTP accounts. In order to create an FTP account, feel free to check 
FTP Connections: using this tool you can monitor the users who are currently logged into your site via FTP. Also, it’s possible to terminate an FTP connection from here.
Backup: this feature allows you to download a zipped copy of your entire account or specific parts of it, such as your home directory, databases, email forwarder configuration, or your email filters configuration. More details guidance about how to make backups in cPanel can be found 
Backup Wizard: a user-friendly interface for creating a backup of your entire site, a partial backup, or allowing a site restoration from the last backup saved. Note, that Restore option provided in this menu is disabled by default on all our shared servers.
Inodes Usage: provides the statistics of your account inodes (files) usage.You will find more details about this tool 
Visitors: the access log of your account provided in a table view.
Errors: here you can check the error log for your account, showing the latest 300 lines of content related to the errors generated by any website hosted in your account.
Bandwidth: provides you with the detailed information the bandwidth used by your account.
Raw Access: the RAW access log for your account
Awstats: this tool provides you with an opportunity to monitor the access indexes on your account – users, robots, accessed pages and many, many more. You will find a more detailed explanation in 
CPU and Concurrent Connection Usage: shows information on the resources consumed by your account.
SSH Access: here you can generate an access key for your account in order to connect using SSH keys. More details about setting up SSH keys can be found in 
IP Blocker: with the help of this tool you can block a range of IP addresses to prevent them from accessing your site. Feel free to refer to 
SSL/TLS: this tool will help you to install and manage your SSL Certificates. You will find a more detailed guide 
Hotlink Protection: in this menu you can enable hotlink protection for your website (that is to prevent someone from direct linking of your images to another website and, as a result, consuming your hosting account bandwidth). Feel free to check 
Leech Protection: allows you to control whether users can give out or publicly post their passwords for restricted areas of your site. It can be used to redirect compromised accounts to the URL of your choice, or suspend them.
SSL/TLS Status: use this interface to view the SSL status of your domains.
Two-Factor Authentication: this tool lets you enable 2FA, an improved security measure that requires two forms of identification: your password and a generated security code. When 2FA is enabled, an app on your smartphone supplies a code you must enter with your password to log in. You can learn more about enabling 2FA 
phpMyAdmin: the database management tool, which allows you to make different changes to MySQL databases in your account. You can find more information about how to work with databases via phpMyAdmin 
MySQL Databases: in this menu you can create and manage MySQL databases in cPanel account.
MySQL Databases Wizard: provides the same functionality as MySQL Databases menu, in a simplified way though. More details about how to use both menus can be found 
PostgreSQL Databases: this option allows you to create and manage PostgreSQL databases in cPanel.
PostgreSQL Databases Wizard: has the same functionality as PostgreSQL Databases menu, but allows to make all the changes in a simpler way.
phpPgAdmin: the database management tool, which allows you to make different changes to PostgreSQL databases in your account.
PHP: here you can check PHP configuration settings. They cannot be customized via this menu. The system displays them for your reference only. In case you need to change PHP settings, feel free to check following articles:
Perl Modules: here you can manage Perl modules available for your account. A Perl module is a discrete component of software for the Perl programming language. Perl is supported on all of our shared/reseller servers. 
RubyGems: in this menu you will find the set of functions that allow you to perform tasks in Ruby. It’s needed to install a Gem before you can use it inside a Ruby program.
Ruby on Rails: with this menu you can use Ruby on Rails features. Ruby on Rails is a free web application framework for the Ruby programming language. It is often referred to as ‘Rails’ or ‘RoR’. We support RoR with our Stellar Plus, Stellar Business and Reseller packages (and old Professional, Ultimate, Business SSD, Reseller packages). The following versions are working on our servers: Ruby – 1.8.7, Rails – 2.3.18. More information can be found in 
Optimize Website: this feature allows you to enable/disable and configure the compression of your website by tweaking the way Apache handles requests, which can increase the performance of your website.
Cron Jobs: here you can set up scripts running on a scheduled basis. For more details about setting up CronJobs refer to 
Track DNS: using this tool you can check DNS information about any domain, or to trace the route from the server your site is on to the computer you are accessing cPanel from.
Indexes: in this menu you can customize the way in which visitors can view a directory on the web.
Error Pages: this feature allows you to edit the code for the default errors pages your website can display.
Apache Handlers: here you can configure different Apache handlers for dealing with certain file formats.
MIME Types: provides you with the information about the system predefined MIME types and the option to add a MIME Type on your own.
Virus Scanner: this tool will allow you to scan your account for viruses with ClamAV virus scanner. ClamAV is an open source (GPL) anti-virus engine used in a variety of situations including email scanning, web scanning, and endpoint security. It provides a number of utilities including a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner and an advanced tool for automatic database updates.
