J David Macor

An essential for any aspiring theme developer is a local install of WordPress. There are plenty of benefits to doing so and there are also pitfalls if you don’t. I will tell you about the pitfalls in a second, but before that, I want to tell you 5 great reasons why you should use a local install as your sandbox as opposed to installing a live version on some subdomain of yours:

1. Works exactly like the real deal; plugins and all
2. No need to mess with FTP programs
3. Develop anywhere (no connection needed)
4. Make sure your theme is compatible with latest version of WordPress
5. Code in secret, then release with a bang

I can personally attest that the last reason is a good one. While working on the current theme for this website, I accidentally pinged Technorati, which notified a bunch of people of my latest work. When this site finally got released, it was more of a fizzle instead of a bang. Anyhow, let’s get on to the tutorial.

Install WordPress Locally

1. Download and Extract XAMPP Lite

   1. Go to http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html#646
   2. Download XAMPP Lite.exe (the .exe is a smaller, faster download)
   3. Move the download to the root of your C drive C:\
   4. Run the .exe and the directory will be installed

2. Startup Apache and MySQL

   1. Open the xampplite folder
   2. Double click setup_xampp.bat
   3. After the program tells you to have fun, press any key on your keyboard
   4. Now double click on xampp-control.exe
   5. Now start the Apache and MySQL services
      
   6. If everything worked, you will see Running next to those 2 services

3. Create a New Database

   1. In your browser of choice, navigate to http://localhost/xampp/splash.php
   2. Click on your language
   3. On the left hand side, under Tools, click phpMyAdmin
   4. On that page, you will see the MySQL heading, like in the screenshot below
      
   5. Call the database wordpress and select utf8 unicode ci from the drop down menu
   6. Click Create

4. Install WordPress

   1. Download and extract WordPress to your desktop
   2. In the extracted folder, open the file wp-config-sample.php in a text editor
   3. Edit the file to look like this:
      define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'root'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', ''); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value
   4. Save the file as wp-config.php
   5. Now open up the Xammplite folder on your C drive and then open the htdocs folder
   6. Copy the whole Wordpress folder here
   7. Finally, use your browser and navigate to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

ENJOY YOUR LOCAL WORDPRESS INSTALL