A local server is a website server, similar to what you would purchase through a company like GoDaddy or A2 Hosting, that is running on the machine you install it on. It is highly beneficial when developing websites as you do not need to commit your changes online to see the edits and you can break the site without anyone knowing. Local servers are also great for testing WordPress updates before updating them on your live websites. Let’s learn how to install WordPress locally using XAMPP.
You can install and configure WordPress — locally — in 5 easy steps.
Step 1: Download & Install XAMPP
XAMPP (pronounced zamp) is a free PHP development environment that contains MariaDB (or MySQL depending on which release version you download), PHP and Perl and will be the backbone for your local server.
- Download XAMPP for Windows, Linux or OS X
- Unzip the download and follow the instructions to install XAMPP on your machine. We typically install it on our C drive.
- Select the XAMPP components that works best for you. Our set it is typically:
- Server: Apache, MySQL or MariaDB
- Program Languages: PHP, phpMyAdmin
- Open XAMPP and start Apache and MySQL or Maria DB
Step 2: Download & Install WordPress
- Download WordPress
- Unzip the file and double click into the wordpress folder. You should see wp-includes, wp-content, wp-admin and about 16 related WordPress files.
- Move all of these folders and files into your htdocs folder in XAMPP. If you’re following our setup it should be located in C:\xampp\htdocs
Step 3: Create Database & User in phpMyAdmin
- Open phpMyAdmin by clicking the Admin button in XAMPP
- Click the Databases tab, name your database without spaces and click create
- Select your database for the left hand column
- Click the Privileges tab and add a user.
- DB_NAME = your database name
- DB_USER = your database user
- DB_PASSWORD = password for the database user
- DB_HOST = localhost
Step 5: Run WordPress
Now you are ready to wrap up installation. With XAMPP running open Chrome or your favorite Internet browser and type localhost in the address bar and hit enter.
If you’ve entered the database information correctly you should see WordPress’ finish installing screen. This is where you would create your username and password for WordPress. Enter your information and click the Install WordPress button.
