Installing WordPress on Your Computer

This guide deals with installing WordPress locally on a computer running Windows. It assumes you already have a web server installed and running. If you don’t, you can refer to our web server installation guide which covers the installation of a web server software, PHP and MySQL using XAMPP. All three components are required to install WordPress locally.

Uploading WordPress

The first thing would be to download a copy of WordPress from http://www.wordpress.org. A latest version of WordPress can be downloaded by the following link: http://wordpress.org/latest.zip. If you prefer downloading a .tar.gz package instead, you can do so by using the following link: http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Once you are done downloading WordPress, open it and extract the contents of the package to your local web server’s document root. Assuming you installed XAMPP under C:\, your document’s root would be C:\XAMPP\htdocs\

So extracting the contents of the package to the root folder of your web server should give you a folder named ‘wordpress’ which will be located under C:\XAMPP\htdocs\.

You are almost there now. Now you just need to configure a few things and you’ll have a working copy of WordPress installed on your local system.

Creating a Database and Database User

Now that you are done copying all files, it’s time you create a database and database user that can be used by WordPress. You’ll be creating a new database using phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin is a tool that can be used to create or access MySQL databases. It can be accessed using your browser by going to http://127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin/. Here is a screenshot of how it looks

Creating a Database User

Now that you have the phpMyAdmin window open, the first thing you’ll do would be to create a database user. To do that, click on the ‘Privileges’ link on the top right hand side of the screen. You’ll be presented with a ‘User overview’ screen. From there click on the ‘Add a new User’ link. You’ll now be presented with a screen from which you can create a new database user.

Over there, find the User name field and enter a username of your choice. The next field labeled Host should be left empty. The Host field is followed by a password field where you’ll need to enter a password of your choice. phpMyAdmin also lets you generate a random password if you want to use one. You can use any password you want to.

Once you are done filling the form, you’ll need to select the option labeled ‘Grant all privileges on wildcard name (username\_%)’ under ‘Database for user’. This will grant the database user you are creating access to all databases on your system.

Now under ‘Global privileges’, select ‘Check All’. This will assign the new database user all privileges to the database(s).

You can now press the Go button to create the database user. Note down the details like the Username and Password you chose.

Creating a Database

You have a database user, now you need to create a database that you can use with WordPress. To do that, click on the ‘Database’ link under phpMyAdmin. Doing that will give you a list of existing databases. Browse towards the end of the page and you should see a heading titled ‘Create new database’. Over there, enter a name and select Collaction from the dropdown menu. You can name your database wordpress. Click on Create and you should now have a database named wordpress.

You are done creating a database and a database user which you can use with WordPress. You’ll now need to configure WordPress to be able to use the database you just created.

Configuring WordPress

For WordPress to be able to use the database you just created, you’ll need to create and set up a configuration file. Under the main folder of WordPress, find a file named wp-config-sample.php and rename it to wp-config.php. Once it has been renamed, open it using a text editor like Notepad. You need to fill this file with appropriate values which I’ll be showing next.

First of all, find the following line:

define(’DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere’);

Replace putyourdbnamehere with the name of the database you had created using phpMyAdmin.

Next, find the following line:

define(’DB_USER’, ‘usernamehere’);

Replace usernamehere with the name of the database user you created earlier.

Now find the line:

define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘yourpasswordhere’);

And replace yourpasswordhere with the password of the database user. Here is a sample screenshot of how everything should look.

You are done. You can save and close the file now. By now everything is almost set up. You just need to run the WordPress installer.

Installing WordPress

Now that you have everything in order, you just need to run the WordPress installer. You can do that by accessing the following URL: http://127.0.0.1/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

The first screen that you’ll see of the installer will look as follows:

Here you’ll need to enter the title for your Blog. Feel free to give it any title you want. You’ll also need to enter an email address. Once you are done populating the two fields, click on the ‘Install WordPress’ button.

If the next screen that you see says ‘Success!’ then you are done installing WordPress! It should look as follows:

You should note down the login details shown on that page because the password is randomly generated by WordPress. You’ll need this username and password combination to be able to login to the WordPress administration panel. The WordPress administration panel can be accessed by going to http://127.0.0.1/wordpress/wp-login.php

Hope this blog post was helpful to you, “Installing WordPress Locally on Your Computer“

Spunky Jones.

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