31 January 2010 ~ 17 Comments

How To Install WordPress Locally With XAMPP

WordPress


Have you ever thought of making your personal computer a web server so that you can install and test any web based programs especially WordPress Blog without connecting to the Internet?

Recently, I’ve been introduced to a free open-source software package that allows us to set up an emulated web server hosting environment for installing and testing WordPress locally on a personal computer. This software is called XAMPP and it’s an easy-to-install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. Currently, XAMPP is available for operating system Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Solaris.

Where To Get XAMPP?

A link to the XAMPP download page for each operating system can be found here.

I have downloaded  XAMPP .EXE Installer for Windows and successfully installed it on my personal computer that runs under Windows Vista. If you’re interested to know how I did that, please continue reading…

How To Install XAMPP?

Now, let me show you in step by step on how to install XAMPP and make Windows Vista computer a web server. At this time of writing, the latest version is XAMPP Windows 1.7.3 (the installer file is xampp-win32-1.7.3.exe).

1. Download the XAMPP .EXE Installer for Windows.

2. Double-click the .EXE Installer.

3. Install XAMPP to the default destination folder (C:\).

4. Wait until installation progress bar to turn completely green. A command prompt window will pop up after that.

5. Leave the default value and press <Enter> key. Repeat the step until you see this prompt:

Please choose (1-7/x):

6. Type ‘1′ and press <Enter> key. Wait until XAMPP Control Panel Application appears on the screen.

7. ‘Tick‘ the Svc for Apache to start Apache service. Click ‘OK‘ button when dialog box appears.

8. ‘Tick‘ the Svc for MySql to start MySql service. Click ‘OK‘ button when dialog box appears.

9. Click ‘Start‘ button to start Apache service. Wait until the ‘Running‘ text appears.

10. Click ‘Start‘ button to start MySql service. Wait until the ‘Running‘ text appears.

At this juncture, your XAMPP Control Panel Application should look like this.

XAMPP Control Panel

11. Enter ‘http://localhost/xampp‘ on your web browser.

12. Congratulations if you receive a message showing that “You have successfully installed XAMPP on this system!” as shown below.

Have you successfully installed XAMPP on your personal computer? If successful, please proceed to the next steps.

How To Set Up MySQL Database for WordPress?

Now, I’m going to show you how to configure MySQL database for WordPress.

1. Enter ‘http://localhost/phpmyadmin‘ on your web browser.

2. Under MySQL localhost section, enter database name as ‘wordpress_db‘ and click ‘Create‘ button. You’ll receive a message showing that ‘Database wordpress_db has been created‘. Take note: This value ‘wordpress_db‘ will be used at the later stage when we configure WordPress.

3. Go back to phpMyAdmin Home (‘http://localhost/phpmyadmin‘) again.

4. Click on ‘Privileges‘ tab and click on a link: ‘Add a new user‘.

5. Fill in the form. For the User name field, enter ‘wordpress_user‘. For host, select ‘Local‘. Take note: This value ‘wordpress_user‘ will also be used at the later stage when we configure WordPress.

6. For better security, just click ‘Generate‘ button to randomly generate a password.

7. Write down the User name and Password generated on your screen. Take note: Never use the password shown in the image above.

8. Under ‘Global privileges‘ section, click on ‘Check All‘.

9. Click ‘Go‘ button. If everything goes well, you’ll see a message saying that ‘You have added a new user‘.

10. Under the ‘Database-specific privileges‘ section, for the ‘Add privileges on the following database’ field, select ‘wordpress\_db‘ from the list. This will add ‘wordpress_user‘ as a database user of wordpress table, wordpress_db.

Alright, you’ve just set up a MySQL database for WordPress using phpMyAdmin. Please give yourself a pat in the back before moving on!

How To Install WordPress Locally On Your Computer?

1. Download latest version of WordPress and save it on your computer.

2. Navigate to ‘C:\xampp\htdocs‘ folder.

3. Open up the WordPress ZIP file you downloaded and copy ‘wordpress‘ folder to the ‘htdocs‘ folder.

4. Inside the wordpress folder, open ‘wp-config-sample.php‘ file using notepad or your favorite text editor. My favorite text editor is ConTEXT.

5. Fill in the information with your database information and save it as wp-config.php in the same folder. Take note: Please use the password you’ve written down earlier.

6. Enter ‘http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php‘ on your web browser. If you did correctly, you should be greeted with a WordPress Installation screen.

7. Just fill in the Blog Title and Your E-mail. Then, click ‘Install WordPress‘ button.

8. Below screen shows WordPress installation successful. Take note: username and password generated on your screen will be used for WordPress admin login so please write it down .

9. Now you can open your WordPress Blog locally using this address: ‘http://localhost/wordpress‘.

10. To make any changes on your WordPerss Blog, go to WordPress admin login page at ‘http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin‘, and login with your username and password generated earlier.

These are just the steps you need to do to install WordPress Blog locally on a personal computer. With this emulated web server hosting environment, you can test out different WordPress Themes and Plugins or any web scripts before making it live to your web hosting server.

Hope you find this guide useful and informative!


Related Blogs

Popularity: 100% [?]

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tags: , ,

17 Responses to “How To Install WordPress Locally With XAMPP”

  1. blinkky 3 February 2010 at 12:52 am Permalink

    I use wampserver…More easier for me =)
    blinkky´s last blog ..My Alexa Rank After 308 Days Blogging My ComLuv Profile

  2. Alvin Tan 3 February 2010 at 3:08 am Permalink

    WampServer is also a good software like XAMPP and Abyss Web Server.

  3. JibJab 9 February 2010 at 5:18 pm Permalink

    Note… This do not work on win XP PRO!… Unless you stop IIS

    http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/xampp/

  4. Alvin Tan 9 February 2010 at 9:59 pm Permalink

    Thanks for bringing up this important point! It works under XP home but not under XP Pro…unless we stop IIS.

  5. Kunal Jain 11 February 2010 at 6:12 am Permalink

    Does this work with Windows 7?

    Can I download a copy of my existing wpmu website and use it on a local install so that I can try out new plugins or would I have to make significant database and file changes?

  6. Alvin Tan 11 February 2010 at 1:31 pm Permalink

    These are very good questions.
    For first question, sorry, I haven’t used and tested in Windows 7 so I can’t really tell you the exact answer. But, as far as I know from Microsoft guys, applications which work in Vista should continue to work in Windows 7.
    For second question, I haven’t done that either and it’s good for you to find out! For testing WordPress Themes and Plugins, it should be the same as what you did in your real web hosting server.

  7. fix rundll32 exe error 11 February 2010 at 2:39 pm Permalink

    For reasons uknown only half from the post has been displayed, could it be my browser or the site?

  8. Alvin Tan 11 February 2010 at 3:50 pm Permalink

    It could be due to your html code. Have you tested in different web browsers? what is the url to the post?

  9. registry cleaner comparison 8 March 2010 at 4:13 pm Permalink

    I think most people would agree with your post. I’m going to bookmark this web site so I can come back and read more posts. Keep up the good work!

  10. Alvin Tan 9 March 2010 at 2:06 am Permalink

    Thanks!

  11. George F. Tyson 9 March 2010 at 9:50 pm Permalink

    Hi, Very interesting article. I am quite impressed and just wanted to let you know that you did a fine job on this article. However, I do have some unanswered questions that I would like to ask you. I will contact you via email so that you can clear some of these things up for me. Again, very well written article. Keep up the good work.

  12. Alvin Tan 9 March 2010 at 11:19 pm Permalink

    Thanks so much for your encouraging words. It would be my pleasure to help and answer your questions.

  13. ladies shoes 12 March 2010 at 5:28 pm Permalink

    I Like this site your article is very nice , Thanks, very interesting article, keep up it coming :)

  14. SANDRA GATES 13 March 2010 at 2:33 am Permalink

    neat fantastic website yea nice work our website will soon be adding reviews on websites and add them to our websites as the top best 1000 blogs to visit we also do reviews on Product Reviews all types of reviews thanks

  15. Alvin Tan 13 March 2010 at 10:04 am Permalink

    Thanks guys!

  16. Apostruk 14 March 2010 at 8:46 pm Permalink

    The information you posted is just what I was looking for. Nice job!

    Once a local WebPress site is up and running, can it be uploaded to an internet server for public access?

    If so, how would that transfer be done?

  17. Alvin Tan 14 March 2010 at 11:07 pm Permalink

    I usually use it to test WordPress manual upgrade, WordPress plugins and themes on my desktop. So, I haven’t tried uploading the local WebPress site to an internet server for public access yet. I should try it one of these days.


Leave a Reply

CommentLuv Enabled