Need to ask you guys, Which is the better way to install Wordpress...using Fantastico or manual? You see, Fantastico seems to be an easier way to update your Wordpress installation. Now that Wordpress has SO MANY updates/releases every few weeks, will Fantastico make life easier for me? I only have to to go to Fantastico in Cpanel and look for the latest update and then update... If I install Wordpress manually, I dont think its possible to use Fantastico to update my Wordpress for me...there are some hooks that only work if you install your Wordpress with Fantastico, and will not work if you installed manually and tried to update with Fantastico...am I right? The bad part of Fantastico...I heard Drupal users do not recommend Fantastico as they say it creates problems when they want to update. Will Fantastico create problems for Wordpress, as in Drupal's case? What about migration, if I want to migrate to a new host, and I already installed with Fantastico, will that factor create potential problems? Can you provide your own experiences here? The only reason why I'm thinking of Fantastico is due to the very regular updates in Wordpress...so I'm very interested in Fantastico's fast features, but need to know the drawbacks.
I would prefer to employ the manual method. It is very easy to follow through (I have just set up my blog in less than a couple of minutes). Anyway, it should not pose any issues when you are moving hosts.. as backup the database and install again.
I have used it to install and update several WP sites. I have experienced zero problems. I added extra templates to one of those site manually after the install and before the upgrade again no problems. I even moved one of those sites twice in less than a month. Don't ask! When I did that I used auto install on the new server modified a couple of entries in the sql dump and imported it. I can install most scripts with no problems but why do it? Fantistico makes it a 2 minute job. Upgrades take less than a minute. Next time I need WP I will do it again.
Just check what version your fantastico is offering. It is better to use the latest version. Ha ha..good point; the time wasted on this thread is more than that taken for manual install.
Do it manually, that way you are always using the most recent version of the script. It may take you a whole minute or two longer to install but its well worth it.
Using Fantastico makes the job easier but the thing about which you should highly care is the version of wordpress install as mentioned by sachin410. But I would like to mention one more thing, if your host is offering old version of wordpress then ask them to upgrade them and 99% of hosts won't argue. I hope you know why? We are the customers!
I installed wordpress often with fantastico and had no problem. Even if it's not up to date on your host, you can install it with fantastico to take care of all the database creation and such, and update manually later.
i would go against fantastico, chances are the version in fantastico is not up to date with the latest release