How to install wordpress on local machine?

Large number of themes and plugins are released for wordpress. It is a good practice to install and check them locally before uploading to your blog. It is also very useful when you develop your own wordpress theme. In this tutorial we will learn how to install wordpress locally.

First of all you need a web server for testing that supports PHP. You also need PHP application and MySQL database for storing the data. A good combination is Apache (Web Server), PHP (Scripting Language) and MySQL (Database). You can download individual packages from the respective websites, install and configure them manually. If you are not familiar with this process, no need to worry, there is an application available that does it effortlessly for you. It is called Wamp server and you can download it from here. Read this tutorial and install Wamp server on your machine.

Download wordpress installation files from here and save the file in your PC. Navigate to folder, “c:\wamp\www” and create a folder and give it a name, “myblog”. Extract all the wordpress files inside this folder. For testing, url that you have to type in your web browser will be, http://localhost/myblog. When you type and execute this address in your browser, “index.php” will run.

Run wamp server from start menu, if it is not running.

Make sure that its icon in the system tray is white not red. If it is red, there might be some problems with installation of the server. Click on the wamp server icon in the tray and choose Restart all services.

We are installing wordpress 2.6 and the minimum requirements for PHP and MySQL are…

PHP version 4.3 or higher.
MySQL Version 4.0 or higher.

Now we have to create a MySQL database and a user for that database. We have to give this user all the database privileges. Type http://localhost/ in your browser and press enter to execute. Wamp Server’s default page will open. Select phpMyAdmin from the tools options. From phpMyAdmin index page, enter name of the database (myblog) in Create new database text field and click on the create button.

phpMyAdmin will create an empty database for you. Click on the Privileges tab, root is the default user for database and having all the privileges. If you want to create a different user, click on the edit icon under Action column.

At the bottom you would see options creating a new user. Select the … keep the old one option and click on the Go button.

A new window will popup, type in your user name (uid) and password (uid123) and leave host field as it is. Make sure that all the Global Privileges check boxes are on. Click on the go button. Now if you check the privileges tab, you would find a new user there.

Note down the information about the database.

Host: localhost
DB: myblog
DB User: uid
DB Password: uid123

Navigate to myblog folder inside the www directory which is inside c:\wamp fodler, select the wp-config-sample.php; right click and choose Open With > Notepad. Here you have to change top three lines of code only, i.e.

// ** MySQL settings ** //
     define('DB_NAME', 'putyourdbnamehere');    // The name of the database
     define('DB_USER', 'usernamehere');     // Your MySQL username
     define('DB_PASSWORD', 'yourpasswordhere'); // ...and password

Change settings as follows…

// ** MySQL settings ** //
     define('DB_NAME', 'myblog');    // The name of the database
     define('DB_USER', 'uid');     // Your MySQL username
     define('DB_PASSWORD', 'uid123'); // ...and password

Save file as wp-config.php, make sure to put name inside quotes like “wp-config.php”, otherwise notepad will make it wp-config.php.txt.

Open http://localhost/myblog/wp-admin/install.php in your browser and now we can see first glimpse of the wordpress. Enter blog title and email address, also check the Allow my blog to appear in the search engines like Google and Technorati. Click on the Install Wordpress button.

With in seconds your installation is over. By default the username will be admin and password will be randomly generated for you. Note down the password or select the password and copy to clipboard by pressing ctrl+c on keyboard and click on Log In button.

Enter Username as admin and paste the password. Click on the Log In button and wow you are logged into wordpress.

Click on the Users link that is located at the right corner of the interface. Now click on the admin and change your password to something that a human can read. Options for changing the password are located at the bottom of the page.

It was not tough to install wordpress on local machine. Infect it was too easy, this is the beauty of wordpress and that’s why it is famous. Now you can start playing with different options available to you.

If you are curious about, where the wamp server has stored by database, go to folder, “c:\wamp\bin\mysql5.0.51b\data”; there you can see “myblog” folder.