How to Install WordPress Locally on Your Computer.

This is a Step By Step Tutorial to help you Install WordPress locally on your computer. Installing WordPress locally gives you a testing environment before you go live on your blog or website.

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is an open-source Content Management System (CMS) from WordPress.org written in PHP. WordPress is built and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database to render a web content environment

According to Forbes, WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world. The Content Management System is used by over 75 million websites worldwide.

WordPress enjoys over half a billion views and serves more than 25 pages per month. It’s estimated that the CMS builds more than 14.7% of the Top 100 Websites in the World.

Websites That WordPress Can Build.

WordPress can practically build anything you can imagine with carrying levels of efficiency and technical requirements.

While WordPress is more popular for building news publishing websites and Blogs, the script can build a lot more websites.

Af of 2020, WordPress is among the top five CMS of choice for business sites, eCommerce stores among others. The platform also powers Portfolios, Forums, Social networks, and Membership websites. Needless to say, WordPress powers this website.

Why Install WordPress locally on your computer.

Installing WordPress on a local Computer is particularly useful to developers and coders. If you want to set up your live website, you may need to install your WordPress on your server instead of building on your local computer.

By installing WordPress on your computer you will get a testing environment that you can use to build and test several WordPress themes, plugins, and other sets of code before you move to a production environment.

Its also particularly useful when you wish to clone a copy of your website locally and use it to debug errors that your online website may be experiencing. You will be able to test several codes before you make the changes needed on your online website.

What You Need Before You Install WordPress on your Computer.

WordPress is a lightweight software that does not require loads of resources. WordPress is a modular software that you can scale from typical installation to a more complex website using plugins.

You can select from tons of freely available plugins,  buy premium plugins, or even code your own. Needless to say, the more plugins you install the more resource requirements your WordPress installation will require. A typical WordPress installation ordinarily requires the following resources:

• Disk Space: 1GB+
• Web Server: Apache or Nginx
• Database: MySQL version 5.0.15 or greater or any version of MariaDB.
• RAM: 512MB+
• PHP: Version 7.3 or greater.
• Processor: 1.0GHz+
• The mod_rewrite Apache module.

How to Install WordPress on your Windows Computer

As earlier explained, WordPress works with a database either Mysql or MariaDB. Before you attempt to install WordPress, you will need to first install WAMP so you can get a database server.

What is WAMP?

WAMP is an acronym that stands for Windows, Apache, Mysql, and PHP. WAMP is a free and open-source platform and uses the Apache webserver.

While all the Softwares in question are separate and independent, its advisable that you install them in one lamp. It’s definitely possible to install one by one but if you are not an experienced user, it will be problematic for you to use the Softwares.

Installing WAMP will compile all the Softwares and bind them together so that you are able to run them out of the box.

Installing WAMP.

You may get a copy of WAMP from Sourceforge. Download your WAMP server and install the server on your windows computer.

The WAMP server – a web server, will install Apache, Mysql, and PHP on your computer needed for WordPress install.

Please note that WampServer comes in 32 bits and WampServer 64 bits. You will need to select the version compatible with your windows operating system.

Set a Database for Your Local WordPress Installation

After Installing WAMP, you need to create a MySQL database. To create a Database, Run your WAMP server. You will know its running if you see a green WampServer icon at the bottom right of your screen. Click the WAMP icon to open the Database Control Interface called phpMyAdmin.

Use the MYSQL default username: root and blank password continue to create a database to be used by your Local WordPress Installation.

Install WordPress Locally

After creating your database, you will need to get a copy of the free WordPress CMS software from the WordPress Site.

Once you get the zip folder, extract the download to the WAMP server public web folder located at
C:\wamp64\www or something like that depending on where you installed your WAMP server.

Extracting the content of the WordPress zip to your server public folder, you may rename the extracted folder to whatever name you want. For purposes of this tutorial I will use the folder name “site” so the location of my WordPress script is C:\wamp64\www\site.

Launch the automated installation guide and follow the onscreen guide by navigating to  http://localhost/site/ from your browser.

You may also need to read: How to Install WordPress On Your Server.

When prompted, input the database details for the database you created and the admin user name and password.

If nothing goes wrong you will be presented with a successful installation message and a link to login to your admin area or to view the website.

Before you use your website you will need to navigate to the root of your website in our case C:\wamp64\www\site look for the folder named “install” and rename it to something and proceed now to use your WordPress installation.