Installing Wordpress on local Windows using Xampp

Wordpress is the most popular web publishing platform for blogs. is simple, beautiful and very powerful. Wordpress is simple because you don’t have to be a technical person in order to setup it up, in a few minutes you can have a blog up and running without touching any code. it is beautiful because it has hundreds of templates you can choose from, and it is powerful because you can publish your thoughts to the world with just a click on a button.

Most of web hosting providers offer Wordpress pre-installed, you only need to create a database and run a script and enter the name, password, etc of the blog, and Wordpress will be installed automatically.

Wordpress needs PHP version 4.3 or greater and   MySQL version 4.0 or greater and a web server like Apache, IIS, or Litespeed. installing these applications manually is a long task, and probably you won’t be able to do it yourself if you don’t have technical skills, because each of these applications require configurations and modifications to some of the core files that only a person well acquainted with the files would know what the heck is up to.

Luckily for us, there are simple setup applications like Xampp -Xampp is a package that bundles PHP, MYSQL and APache Web Server all in one, and configure them for you, so you only need to download it and install it.

Go to the Apache Friends and download Xampp for windows from here http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html download it and follow their method of installation using the installer from here once Xampp has be installed, you should be able to open Xampp control panel from the short-cut it creates on the desktop:

Make sure Apache and MySQL is running, then open your browser, IE, or Firefox, and type http://localhost   and hit ENTER. the Xampp interface should come up:

Once on the Interface, click on PHPAdmin, that will bring you to MYSQL admin panel:

Click on Databases, and create a new database on the following screen:

Name your database accordingly, I will name it wordpress-test for the sake of this tutorial. click on Create button, and you should get a confirmation that the database has been created.

Click on Server-localhost to go back to PHPAdmin panel, then click on Privileges:

On the following screen click on Add a new user.  Enter Username using “Text Field: host should be Local type your password, and then confirm it, and click on Check All under global privileges and then click on GO right at the bottom:

You should get a confirmation that the new user has been created. You are done with the database part!

Now download Wordpress from wordpress.org and save it on Xampp htdocs root folder:

Once you have copy Wordpress files to Xampp htdocs root folder, open Internet Explorer, or Firefox, and type the exact path URL to where you copy the Wordpress files:

Remember the htdocs folder is the root directory of your web server, that is equivalent of locahost and then the name of the wordpress folder, which in your case probably would be Localhost/wordpress, Wordpress will ask you to create a new configuration file.

Click on Create a configuration file. Next, the welcome to Wordpress wizard will come up: click on Let’s go

On the following screen, type the database name, username, and password. these are the same credentials we created at the beginning:

Click on Submit. If everything is all right, you should get a message telling you are all set to go:

Click on Run the install. Next, you will be asked to enter the name of the blog, and e-mail address.

After entering the name of your blog, and e-mail address, you should get your username and password to login to your blog admin panel.

Copy those credentials to a notepad page, and click on Log in. From there on, your wordpress test site should be up and running.

Use the URL http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin to login to your blog admin panel.

That was easy, wasn’t it?