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:
- Works exactly like the real deal; plugins and all
- No need to mess with FTP programs
- Develop anywhere (no connection needed)
- Make sure your theme is compatible with latest version of WordPress
- 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
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Download and Extract XAMPP Lite
- Go to http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html#646
- Download XAMPP Lite.exe (the .exe is a smaller, faster download)
- Move the download to the root of your C drive C:\
- Run the .exe and the directory will be installed
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Startup Apache and MySQL
- Open the xampplite folder
- Double click setup_xampp.bat
- After the program tells you to have fun, press any key on your keyboard
- Now double click on xampp-control.exe
- Now start the Apache and MySQL services
- If everything worked, you will see Running next to those 2 services
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Create a New Database
- In your browser of choice, navigate to http://localhost/xampp/splash.php
- Click on your language
- On the left hand side, under Tools, click phpMyAdmin
- On that page, you will see the MySQL heading, like in the screenshot below
- Call the database wordpress and select utf8 unicode ci from the drop down menu
- Click Create
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Install WordPress
- Download and extract WordPress to your desktop
- In the extracted folder, open the file wp-config-sample.php in a text editor
- 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 - Save the file as wp-config.php
- Now open up the Xammplite folder on your C drive and then open the htdocs folder
- Copy the whole Wordpress folder here
- Finally, use your browser and navigate to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php
Its easy to install it. Even on a server, it’s not difficult.
Well I was browsing the internet today and I entirely freaked out. I absolutely found my ex-girlfriend pictures on the internet. I have no idea when she did this but my ex-girlfriend was making at liberty with some other teen.
Does anyone be struck by any info on this ex-girlfriend site?
Thanks david.. it’s really help me a lot..
Thanks David, it saved me a lot of time since I am a newbie to WP.
I am going to try this install this weekend! I would love to be able to tweak everything before I use up loads of bandwidth refreshing
I’ve just installed WP 2.9.1 locally with XAMPP Windows 1.7.3 in my Vista PC.
How To Install WordPress Locally With XAMPP
i love that people like you share your newbie helping info with people like me. thankyou!
Thanks for the article….
If anyone is running IIS, you need to change the port on IIS to 8080 for this to run, and turn off skype, it runs on port 80 also.
Great tips!! So I can edit wordpress themes on my computer itself!
Wrodpress theme install on window? What is the advantage of it?
i installed wordpress on server machine which is a win XP PC, in the same way u explined in the procedure.. and it got installed wery well.
but my problem s i cudn’t access the login page from any other pc’s which are connected on LAN..my idea is to develope a intranet blog which can be seen and updated by any other computers on the local intranet(LAN)..so plz give me step by step procedure to make this work…
Thanks for sharing useful software.
Can we install also in blogs?
I am going to try this install this weekend! I would love to be able to tweak everything before I use up loads of bandwidth refreshing
Now wordpress is 3.0, i am so happy to check the new features.
This is just the info I needed. Thanks to you!
Thanks for the tips. This would be great for a staging server. Let’s you try out themes and features. Just make sure you’ve got high bandwidth connection if you want others to access your new home-managed wordpress blog.
I found this to work great for development of our fitness store. We wanted to change the entire look of it and make sure all the weight training equipment and products viewed correctly before re-launching. This write-up worked amazingly well!
So once you do and I think that is very easy. thanks for these tips.
Very nice and informative post, clearly explaining everything about the theme and customization options of the website
information like this are very useful on the Internet
Nice information, I really appreciate the way you presented.Thanks for sharing..
Thank you. Tired of Typepad failing and getting ready to migrate to Wordpress. Wanted to start building themes anyway. Very helpful.
Thank you for this great Tutorial,
well, what can i say.. thanks for the tutorial.. it really helped me i didn’t really know exactly how to install wordpress locally so i could verify some themes up and not use my website’s bandwidth… thanks again, great post!
Hi! I’ve been trying to install wordpress on my computer. I followed the steps
and I got thios error message…
Error establishing a database connection
This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at localhost. This could mean your host’s database server is down.
* Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
* Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
* Are you sure that the database server is running?
what did I do wrong?
Very useful, I’d seen a tutorial on it somewhere else but forgot how to do it. Very simple.
AMAZING! Thanks sooo much. I’ve been looking for a simple way to install wordpress locally for days…I’m so glad I found your post. You saved me so much time. Thanks.
I tried exactly the steps you suggested and managed to create a perfect blog on my weight equipment site. It took me like 30 minutes or so and trust me…I’m to tech guy. Your tut was so easy to follow and straight forward. I recommend it to anyone! A
I’ve just finished setting up wordpress on a few of my sites and I have to say it is THE best blog platform I’ve ever used.
Hello!
First, thank you very much for this valuable information!
Now for my question. I want to develop and host blogs for businesses. Is it possible to have several local bloggers in development and, as everyone prepares for the implementation, simply move to the production server?
If so, you can point me in the right direction to do so?
Great article, looking forward to seeing some more on WP!
Thanks for the great article, really needed that help.. : )
Thanks for the great advice
Very nice and informative post, clearly explaining everything about the theme and customization options of the website information like this are very useful on the Internet Nice information, I really appreciate the way you presented.Thanks for sharing..
testking 70-630
This is really great! I’ll install this right away!
Thank you man.
That was great help.
Thank you very much for this informative post.It is really great.Keep doing the great work!
Sincerely yours,
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Oh,i would like to add that admin you have to check the html of the site because i am posting my name and comes to “???” and each time i have to use html language
Thanks
επιπλα
Very interesting … I like the popup html editor. Do you know if it’s possible to disable the text area from grabbing the tab key? I like being able to type my comment and then tab over to the submit button without needing the mouse. I have no idea how many people do the same, but without data, I tend to avoid things that annoy me.
Bravo website! I will pay more attention on your blog and introduce it to my friends later.Thank you!
it really helped me i didn’t really know exactly how to install wordpress locally so i could verify some themes up and not use my website’s bandwidth
I am new to wordpress and this article is really a great help! The step-by-step instructions are clear and won’t confuse the new aspiring theme developers. Thanks for the article! Certainly a great help!
Why would you want to install word press locally?? Word press comes with a back end which works great over the internet. I really cant see what the benefit would be?
Also it would take a hell of a lot longer in install the server, install database, install wordpress, create wordpress website and finally upload the whole wordpress website then it would to edit it on the internet.
I use MAC so I would recommend to all readers in MAMP. the equivalent of Xamp.
I have never heard of this. Thanks for very rich info. It was very easy to install. I also use mac how to install on MAC? Thnx
Congratulations on having one of the most sophisticated blogs Ive come across in some time! Its just incredible how much you can take away from something simply because of how visually beautiful it is. Youve put together a great blog space –great graphics, videos, layout. This is definitely a must-see blog!
Very informative post!Please keep up the good work!
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Man…you have no idea for how many hours I’ve been trying to set up WP locally on my Windows machine. With your instructions I finished a COMPLETE set up in 10 minutes flat. I’m AMAZED!
Thanks so much.
Why would you want to
install word press locally??
Its really fascinating, but you dont signify it well at all, man. Anyway, in my language, there usually are not much good supply like this.
There are certainly loads of details like that to take into consideration.