Installing WordPress into a user directory without any admin privileges

Question

I posted a question over at webmasters.stackexchange.com that was migrated over to this stack. It's here now:

Canonicalization issue regarding academic URL vs. blog URL

Before the migration, someone over at the webmasters' stack added a comment. I cannot reply to his comment over at that stack because the question is locked, and that user does not seem to be a member of the wordpress stack, so he will likely not see my response here.

Since his comment might lead to a solution to my original problem, I'm going to open it up as an independent question, which I will state below. (Note that you do not have to read my original question to understand or contribute to the one I am about to ask. The original question simply provides some context.)

Question: I have an account on a university department server. I am an academic within that department, which gives me limited privileges. I have a web-enabled directory in my account, and an index.html file in that account can be displayed in the typical way, by visiting www.(universityname).edu/~(username). I pretty much have complete control over this directory, and I (believe) I can run PHP scripts from my directory. However, I don't have any kind of root / admin / superuser privileges.

Is it possible to install the WordPress.org platform to my directory, without additional privileges?

If so, should I install it into the directory or into a subdirectory of it?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Well, you need a database. That seems like the biggest hurdle you'd face without any sort of administrative control over the server. Can you request a MySql database from the school Tech Dept?

If you can get that, and you can run PHP scripts, it seems like you'd have little issue setting up a wordpress install as it runs on top of whatever server platform your school is running. It won't need access to the server itself. However, you are going to need some means of getting the actual files onto the server.

If you can secure the database, along with a user for the database, I would install it and see what happens. Who knows what kind of funky permissions they have setup on their server.