Here’s my quick-start tutorial for installing WordPress. Click the following link to read it.

1. Get a webhosting account that allows you control panel access. You’ll need FTP, PHP (a reasonably recent version), and MySQL. The really great thing is there’s no need for specific picky Perl modules, unlike with MovableType. However, you will want to make sure your host has enabled Apache mod_rewrite, which is necessary if you want to use custom URIs, like I do on this site. Otherwise, all your page permalinks will have a question mark in them, which is a bad idea - search engines tend to ignore things after a ? (the beginning of a database query string). Most hosts will not advertise whether they have mod_rewrite, so ask.

2. If you’re converting from MovableType, do the following. Otherwise, skip to the next step.

A. Download all files you want to keep from your current site via FTP. Save these in a folder on your computer, and don’t do anything to them. Make sure you preserve the directory structure.
B. Use Firefox, Netscape, or Mozilla to export your MT entries as a text file. Do not use Internet Explorer; it won’t work. Save this file to your computer. If it’s over 300K, split it into chunks of approx. 200K, or WP won’t import it properly due to server timeouts (a server generally will allow a single PHP file only so much processor time before it shuts it down for being a hog). Call this file import.txt.
C. Manually backup all your MT templates using notepad - copy and paste from your browser. You’ll want them to make your WP templates later.
D. Use a specially-created MT individual archive template to create redirect pages to all your entries. Do this AFTER you have backed up your site’s original files. Two good options are here (http://wordpress.org/development/archives/2004/03/29/redirecting-mt-entries/) and here (http://wiki.wordpress.org/index.php/MT-Redirect). I use a different format for my permalinks in WP, and if you want to get similar results, email me and I’ll send you my version.
E. Republish your MT blog. If this works, it will create a redirect to each new WP entry, but you won’t know until WP is set up. Don’t kill your MT install yet, just in case.
F. Download your archives (e.g. all MT output files) again via FTP, this time saving them in a different folder.

3. Download WP here (http://wordpress.org/nightly/). I recommend the nightly builds, as the previous release (1.02) isn’t very good compared to the current nightly builds.

4. Extract the WP Zip file or tarball, and upload it to the root of your blog (e.g. yourname.com/blog or yourname.com, whatever you want to be the default page for your blog)

5. Create a database in your control panel. This is usually a very intuitive process. Then create a user for the database - this is separate from your control panel/ftp login, though you can use the same username and password, which I usually do for simplicity. NOTE: If you already have a database set up for other purposes, you don’t have to make a new one, and since many hosting accounts are limited to one database, you may not want to. Like I said, don’t wipe out your previous blog yet.

6. Open the file wp-config-sample.php. On lines 6, 7, and 8, you will need to provide the name of the database, database user, and password, respectively, as set up in the previous step. Save and upload to the blog root. Rename to wp-config.php.

7. Use your broswer to go to yoursite.com/wp-install.php.

8. Follow the directions that appear. If nothing appears, make sure wp-install.php is CHMODded to 755 (rwxr-xr-x). This can be done in your FTP client.

9. Login and begin. First, change your username and password to match what you want them to be. Your login will always be “admin.”

10. Open the stylesheet “wp-layout.css” (this can be done by clicking on “templates” in the wp menu, then typing the filename in the box below the text editing area - very handy online editor). Copy and paste the relevant tags from your old blog’s stylesheet (probably styles-site.css in MT), if applicable.

11. Start playing with with the index.php template in the template editor. Don’t worry about screwing it up, because you can always upload a default copy from the distribution package you downloaded. In general, don’t change anything inside < ?php ?> tags unless it’s in single quotes like ‘this’. You can mess with the rest of the code, and I highly recommend that you do that to get acquainted with what each tag does (e.g. displays entry title, etc.). Do NOT edit it in MS Word, as it has a tendency to use the wrong kind of quote marks and apostrophes (there are about 8 different kinds), which break the PHP code.

12. To view your changes, hit save, and then click “view site >>”. You may want to open a new window for this so you can switch back and forth. All your changes will take place immediately when you hit refresh, since WP generates pages on the fly.