One of the most common issues I run into running a web hosting brand and providing support and consulting for wordpress, is auto installation of the newest version of wordpress. While fantastico is great for providing scripts for clients a lot of this can be done automaticlly by tying the CMS into the order form. For example when a client places an order for wordpress hosting you could move the wordpress files to the created account through cpanel skeleton. I like to package the newest version of wordpress and my “wordpress foundation” files. These files may include client specific theme, recommended plugins, proprietary plugins and scripts as well as the newest version of wordpress 3. This solution is a great starter solution because it doesn’t depend on what billing software you are running. IF you are running multiple CMS platforms for your clients you could have one server skeleton directory of wordpress and one running a skeleton directory of joomla.

1. Log into whm, click Account Functions >> Skeleton Directory, here you will see the target directory for the reseller, or server account. Mine shows /root/cpanel3-skel will be referred as [skeldir] in the rest of this tutorial.
2. SSH into the server in terminal or putty. Command: ssh [user]@[ipaddress/servername] hit enter then type the password for the server.
3.SSH Command, change directory: cd [skeldir]
4.Get current wordpress.org version. using wget: wget wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
5. My team uses a special “WordPress Foundation” Zip file that includes common plugins, and themes commonly requested by clients so they would use scp [fullpath_to_foundationfile] [user]@[ipaddress/servername]:/root/cpanel3-skel
6. Next extract the tar.gz/zip file: tar zxvf latest.tar.gz or unzip [zipfile]
7. Remove foundation file: rm [filename]
8. change to the wordpress dir: cd wordpress
9. Move wordpress files to public_html folder: mv -f * [skeldir]/public_html
10. Verify files and folders moved and not into a subfolder: cd [skeldir]/public_html [enter] dir [enter]
11. Remove wordpress folder rm -rf wordpress
12. Create a new account on the server to Verify the process works and your done