How to install WordPress

Developing on your WordPress projects locally on Windows is the quickest and easiest way to start working on your site locally. This is a complete guide to help you get up and running with WordPress!

Setting up your server

First you will need to download a couple of items:

Download the latest version of WordPress from http://www.wordpress.org/. Keep this in a safe place for now.

Download and install the latest version of WAMP from http://www.wampserver.com/en/.

Note: After installing and starting up WAMP goto http://localhost/ to verify that the server is running, you should be presented with a screen similar to the following:

This is what you should see when you have started up WAMP and headed to http://localhost/

Create your database

WordPress is a dynamica database driven CMS and all of your posts, options, file paths etc are stored in the database.

To create a database point your browser too http://localhost/phpmyadmin/.

Note: PHP MyAdmin is the MySQL administration tool provided with WAMP, you should now see a screen similar to this:

SCREENSHOT

Enter your database name and click ‘Create’ – you have now created the MySQL database from which the WordPress website will run.

Upload WordPress

Next using Windows Explorer head to C://wamp/www and create a new folder – this will hold your WordPress site.

Unzip the contents of the WordPress archive that you downloaded earlier. For demonstration purposes I have named this folder ‘WordPress’.

Note: I recommend WinRar for ease of use and speed when unzipping archived files such as .zip and .tar.

Install WordPress

You can verify that all of the files have been uploaded to your server directory by visiting http://localhost/wordpress-folder-name/

Note: But remember to replace ‘WordPress’ with your chosen folder name.

This is the installation screen, you can now proceed with the installation by filling out site name, site slogan, email etc.

When you enter your database name ensure that you enter the name given when you created your database in PHP MyAdmin.

When asked for the database username and password the default username for PHP MyAdmin is ‘root’ and there is usually no password by default. This is fine for development locally however on a live server you would need to select a very strong password.

Once your installation is complete you are presented with the finished screen with the site login details.

Congratulations! You can now visit your site at http://localhost/wordpress-folder-name.