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In this article I bring you a good way, if you are starting with this, to be able to tinker and break things on a website, without anything happening, as many times as you want.
In addition, you will do it on your own computer, so you will not have to pay anyone to use another computer (hosting).
The tools that I bring you for it also they are free (just like WordPress itself).
If you are a somewhat more advanced user and you already know WordPress, this article will help you, as I have mentioned on other occasions, to be able to “test in a safe environment” before updating or tinkering with plugins and options on a website that is already online.
Keep reading, because you will know how to install wordpress locally (on your computer), with free tools that are fairly easy to use (don’t worry, at the end there will be a video that explains the most important of the two very well).
Let’s start!
Differences between WAMPP and XAMPP
The tools that you are going to see in this article are called WAMPP and XAMPP.
WAMPP comes from Wwindows + Apatch + MySql + PHP. It is a free tool, only installable on the Windows operating system (it exists for MAC and LAMP for Linux).
WAMPP is a server itself, with all the technical advantages that this requires (I’m not going to bore you with technical features now, since what interests us is WordPress!). Just keep in mind that being a server, it allows us to modify PHP, Databases, Apache… and everything we could do on a professional server (as with for example).
The other tool (my favorite) is XAMPP, and in my opinion it is much more complete than WAMPP. With XAMPPin addition to being able to install it on any operating system, you will also have FTP access (very necessary for WordPress), email (necessary to test WordPress plugins) and you can install different accessories that make the tool more complete (among them WordPress installation in one click).
That is why this article is going to be more focused on how to use XAMPP to install WordPress locally.
Install XAMPP
The XAMPP installation is quite simple.
We are going to go step by step, with screenshots and a little explanation, and in one of the sections of this article you will be able to see everything summarized in a video.
Download XAMPP from the official page
First of all, go to the y download it for the operating system you are using.
In my example, I am going to use the macOS operating system.
Once downloaded, obviously, you have to run the application to see the XAMPP installation wizard. 🙂
XAMPP Installation Wizard
The first thing we find is the little window with all the tools that are going to be installed.
You may not need all of them, but I recommend installing them all, to have a better experience when using WordPress as if you had it on a normal server. Note: On macOS and Linux, the installation is slightly different, you won’t see this wizard. In this article we are going to see how the installation is in Windows.
Choose installation directory
By default XAMPP is installed in the xampp folder, on drive C. I recommend leaving it that way, although you can change it to your liking.
let the installation begin
After selecting the directory, and passing a couple of screens clicking on the “Next” button, XAMPP will start to install on our hard drive.
After finishing the installation, a box appears, marked by default. This box allows that when exiting the wizard by clicking on the Finish button, the program automatically opens and we can see the Control Panel.
Starting engines in the Control Panel
When we have the XAMPP Control Panel in front of us, we will have to start its engine.
Simply click on Start in the Apache section (to start an Apache PHP Server), MySQL (to start the database where we will create a specific one for our WordPress).
At all times we have a “log” part where we see the events that are happening on our local server.
If by any chance you get some kind of error when starting Apache or MySQL, it is because the program conflicts with another one that you have open, and that is using the same ports as XAMPP.
If you find yourself in this scenario, close all the programs you can, and use only XAMPP (you will have to exit and re-enter it, with the rest of the programs closed).
Note: Many times the error is caused by the Skype application as it uses the same ports as XAMPP.
Create database with XAMPP
Before installing WordPress, it is necessary create a MySQL database.
The simple reason is that in order to finish the WordPress installation, you have to enter certain information from our database.
In your XAMPP control panel, click on Admin, to open a tool with which you will feel like the biggest hacker on planet Earth: phpMyAdmin.
This is what phpMyAdmin looks like:
Creating the database
At first, the phpMyAdmin application is overwhelming, because it looks like something out of a spy and hacker movie. But do not worry, it is much simpler than it seems (using it at a very basic level).
On the left you can see a list of the databases that currently exist (where yours will appear once you create it).
By clicking on each of the databases, you will see the available options in the center. Remember that by clicking on the “+” symbol, all the elements of your database are displayed, and you can easily access them.
I advise you to take a look at this article I wrote about the .
To create a new database, click in the left column, in New.
Choose a name for your database and select collation utf8_general_ci.
Regarding the creation of the database in XAMPP… that’s it!
This newly created database will take on the “WordPress database aspect” when WordPress itself is installed, as we will see below.
Remember that you can access phpMyAdmin at any time to change the settings you need, in the event that “an emergency” occurs with your website.
he use of phpMyAdmin is very useful depending on what things you want to do in WordPress, and I highly recommend you “play” with the database so that you can see the effects that changing the information from phpMyAdmin has on a WordPress installation.
Install WordPress with XAMPP
It seems not, but the most complicated part is already done! We have already prepared our local server, created a database, and now simply go to its official page and put the downloaded files in the correct place, in order to start the WordPress installer.
Once the zip file is downloaded, we unzip it and we will see something like this:
What to do is move all files to the XAMPP folder called htdocs where we want to have our WordPress.
We must remember that in our installation we have left the default path c:/xampp, so there, in that path, inside the folder (which in my example I have called miweb) we will have to drag the recently downloaded WordPress files and uncompressed.
Once we have all that ready, just visit the correct path localhost / nameofyourexample our web browser (making sure that our local server is active and with Apache and MySQL turned on), and we will see the WordPress installation screen.
In my example, the address will be: localhost/myweb.
After selecting the language in which we want to install WordPress locally, we can see the much desired wizard screen:
By clicking on Go for it!we will see the database configuration screen.
That’s where the database we just created in pypMyAdmin comes into play.
Just put the data of it:
● name of our example: in my case it is bbdd.
● user: default is root.
● password: by default it must be left empty in XAMPP.
● Server and table prefix: leave as is.
Then click Send and if everything goes well, you will see this screen:
Which means that it has successfully connected to the database, and you can now configure some features of your website, before finishing the installation:
The rest consists of enjoying your WordPress website locally! You’ve got it!
Video summary (Install WordPress locally with XAMPP)
Next we do all this process, but in video, since it may seem somewhat complicated by screenshots, you will see in the video that the entire process is quite fast and without further complications.
Install WordPress locally with WAMPP
As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, WAMPP it’s like XAMPP but something else limited (in my opinion).
You can also use it, and the installation is similar to that of XAMPP, although I personally think it is more difficult.
The WAMPP package includes the programming language PHP (including phpMyAdmin too), , and the server Apache. You just have to go to its official website, and download it if you are a Windows user.
Which to choose: XAMPP or WAMPP?
As you can imagine, and for everything I have said in the article, I personally prefer XAMPP.
It is another product intuitiveplus complete (it has FTP, email…) and it is also available for other operating systems.
Whichever you choose, they both fulfill the same function: install wordpress locally.
But if you need something more complete, to test and play with WordPress, I recommend you without thinking twice, XAMPP.
Conclusions
We have seen how useful it is to install WordPress locally, since it gives us that sandbox, where to play, break, manipulate, learn, and everything you can imagine with WordPress.
The installation process is not too complicated, and besides, all the tools you need for it are free!
If you already had WordPress installed, you can too thanks to this tutorial.
Whether you are a WordPress novice, or if you are dedicated to creating websites with this, this tool interests you.
If you are a novice, to get to know wordpress thoroughly, as well as the use of phpMyAdmin and all the files and configurations that exist.
If you are a professional who uses WordPress, it helps you to test possible changes to your production websites, in an environment “safe” from blunders, or to solve problems trying different methods before migrating to your .
I hope this article has helped you as much as it helped me to discover how to install WordPress locally back in early 2010.
Since then I have not stopped learning WordPress, and it is the tool that feeds me every day. I know that this article has been a bit more difficult than usual on a technical level, but I am sure that it will be very useful to you.
A hug and see you in the next article!
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