Watching it made me realize how much simpler Fantastico makes it for customers to install a whole range of scripts including most of the well known CMS platforms including WordPress, drupal, Joomla, Mambo etc. and also a whole range of other scripts including forums, help desks, classifieds, shopping carts, mailing lists, wikis, polls and more.

elliottmediagroup.com I show you how to install WordPress, the great blogging platform, on your webhost.

Before you follow the steps shown in this video do make sure that you don’t already have Fantastico – if you do you will find a smiley face icon in your cpanel named Fantastico or Fantastico Deluxe. Some hosts offer alternative automatic installation tools for common scripts but Fantastico is the most well known.

If you go for cheap hosting this is often one area where cost cutting takes place but even reasonably priced shared hosting nowadays often includes Fantastico, even if the number of scripts might be more limited. It may be something you want to ask before buying a hosting package – does your cpanel come with Fantastico or any auto script installation service?

For example, hosting with Hostgator you will get Fantastico Deluxe with all the following scripts ready to be installed with a few mouse clicks:

Blogs:
b2evolution
Nucleus
WordPress

Classifieds:
Noahs Classifieds

Content Management:
drupal
Geeklog
Joomla 1.5
Joomla
Mambo
PHP-Nuke
phpWCMS
phpWebSite
Siteframe
TYPO3
Xoops
Zikula

Customer Relationship:
Crafty Syntax Live Help
Help Center Live
osTicket
PerlDesk
PHP Support Tickets
Support Logic Helpdesk
Support Services Manager

Discussion Boards:
phpBB
SMF

E-Commerce:
CubeCart
OS Commerce
Zen Cart

F.A.Q.:
FAQMasterFlex

Hosting Billing:
AccountLab Plus
phpCOIN

Image Galleries:
4Images Gallery
Coppermine Photo Gallery
Gallery

Mailing Lists:
PHPlist

Polls and Surveys:
Advanced Poll
LimeSurvey
phpESP

Project Management:
dotProject
PHProjekt

Site Builders:
Soholaunch Pro Edition
Templates Express

Wiki:
TikiWiki CMS/Groupware
PhpWiki

Other Scripts:
Dew-NewPHPLinks
Moodle
Open-Realty
OpenX
PHPauction
phpFormGenerator
WebCalendar

As you can see, Fantastico not only makes installation a breeze but also offers you a good deal of choices and ideas for your websites. If you still have to do things manually however, this video explains how.

By way of contrast the following video shows exactly how Fantastico automates the process and enables anyone to install WordPress (and many other scripts) within a couple of minutes tops.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W6yOY6VsRI

As the video author says, WordPress is proud of what they call a 5 Minute install. Here is a true 1 minute installation with a cpanel Web Host. Only someone with experience could do it the manual way in 5 minutes but anyone can keep it under two minutes this way!

(For more information on Roboform as mentioned in the video you can download Roboform free here.