Installation of WordPress on localhost

Why install wordpress.org locally on your computer?

We can do all our testing on our local computer , one that doesn’t affect our live WordPress site.

Note: If you install WordPress locally on Windows, then the only person who can see that site is you. If you want to make a website that is available to the public, then you need to have a domain name and web hosting.

What do I need for running wordpress.org locally on my computer?

For Windows users, WampServer is the best way to start off with installation of wordspress.org on your computer? WAMP, is a compilation of Apache web server, PHP and MySQL bundled for Windows computers.

Installation of WampServer

After downloading the WampServer, install it.

By default, it will install to C:\wamp64 folder. After installation, start the WampServer and pay attention to the icon on the taskbar. 

Setting up the Database for Local WordPress setup.

Click on the WampServer icon on the taskbar and click on phpMyAdmin.

This will take you the web based interface to the phpMyAdmin login screen. If during the installation, you have chosen Internet explorer as the default, it will open up in IE. Enter the username: root and leave the password field blank. These are the default credentials to login into your localhost phpMyAdmin. Next click on the Go button

After logging in, we need to create a blank database for WordPress. For this, click on the 'Databases' tab, then choose a name 'myTest_db' for our database and click on 'Create'

Now the database is ready. We can install WordPress.

Installation of WordPress

Go to the official downloads page of WordPress and download the latest version of WordPress to your local computer. In my case the latest version  'wordpress-5.7' has been downloaded. It will download as a Zip File. Extract the zip file and copy the 'wordpress' folder. Paste the ‘wordpress’ folder into the folder 'C:\wamp64\www' . 

This is how the folder will look after the copy.

You can now rename the folder 'wordpress' to any name you want. This will be the URL of the local wordpress site, so take care that it is something which you can remember easily. In my case, I choose to rename 'wordpress'  as 'mysite'.

Go to the browser and openup the URL : http://localhost/mysite/ and complete the configuration settings.

The next time you want to login, go to this URL, key in the above user ID and password:

http://localhost/mysite/wp-login.php 

Or 

http://localhost/mysite/wp-admin