Install WordPress In Your Local Computer With XAMPP

If you’ve been using WordPress to power your blog, you’d probably know that it is very useful to have a copy of WordPress installed in your local computer. It allows you to post a draft copy of your article offline, test & modify your theme or plugins locally before upload to the server.

Setting up WordPress on your local computer is straight forward. All you need is the WordPress itself & XAMPP as a host server. In this article, I show you how to install WordPress on your local computer with XAMPP.

1 Download & Install XAMPP Lite

First, you need to download & install XAMPP Lite. (I recommend the lite version because there are some applications that bundled with the full version which you are hardly need them for normal work. XAMPP Lite is most importantly contains Apache, MySQL & PHP, those three are the one we need.)

Be sure to download the self-extracting archive, it is the easiest way to install XAMPP. Double click the EXE file, choose a directory and click “Install”.

Once the installation is completed, double click the “XAMPP Control Panel” icon to launch XAMPP Control Panel. Next, click “Apache” & “MySql” start buttons to get both applications running.

Now, you need to check whether your Apache local server is running properly. Go to your browser, in the address bar type http://localhost & press enter. If the XAMPP is installed correctly, you will see the default “splash” page as illustrated bellow. Select a language to enter the welcome page.

2 Create The Database For WordPress

Your Apache server & MySql database are now running. Now we need to create a database for your WordPress. Under the Tools menu on the welcome page, click “phpMyAdmin”. Enter “MyWordpress” into the “Create New Database” textbox, make sure “utf8_unicode_ci” is selected & press “Create”.

3 Download & Install WordPress

That’s all for XMAPP. Now, download the latest version of WordPress http://wordpress.org/ (zip file). Extract the WordPress to a new folder (name it as MyWordpress) under the “htdocs” folder where “XMAPP” is installed (default should be at C:\xampplite\htdocs\MyWordpress).

Under the folder, rename the file wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php. Open & edit the file in Notepad, locate & change the following lines, make sure it is exactly the same as illustrated (database name is ‘MyWordpress’, database username is ‘root’, password is ” & hostname is ‘localhost’).

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'MyWordpress');

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

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

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

Again, go to your browser, in the address bar type http://localhost/wordpress/ & press enter. Key in a Blog Title, Your E-mail & press “Install WordPress”.

That’s it, your WordPress is now in your locally on your computer & ready to be used . Have fun !