There are plenty of articles around about installing WordPress locally, but the other week when I wanted to do it, I couldn’t find out how to do it. How awful! Today I’m going to walkthrough installing WordPress locally on Windows as I don’t have a Mac. Yet. I digress.

Install Wamp Server

We’re going to be using something called Wamp Server. Download it and install it. When installing, ignore the SMTP setup screen, below as you don’t really need it.

With that done, click launch WAMP server. Next, with WAMP installed, click ‘Start’, ‘Computer’, ‘Local Disc (C)’, ‘wamp’ and then ‘www’. This is where ‘stuff’ goes. In our case, ‘stuff’ is WordPress. Download the latest version from WordPress.org. Unzip the file, copy and paste the contents into the www folder we just navigated to. Here comes the installation bit. Make sure that your WAMP server is online – in your browser to to /localhost/phpmyadmin. If it is online then you’ll see something like the below, but if you don’t, go into all programs and under ‘WampServer’ click ‘start’.

Next step is to create a new MySQL Database. Fill in the box above with ‘WordPress’ and click create. With that done, close phpMyAdmin.

Now we’re onto the home straight. Go back to your www file and open the wp-config-sample file. Then fill in the fields with the details below.

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'WordPress');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'root');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', '');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Then save the wp-config-sample file as wp-config.php and you’re done! Navigate to /localhost/, follow the instructions and you’re done! Simple, no?

This post is a slight heard start to next week’s ‘A Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Theme Development’ week; [s] to make sure you catch it!