How to Install WordPress Locally

WordPress Locally is one of the easiest ways to create your website free of cost. To Install WordPress Locally, you must install XAMPP. It is a little bit tricky but here I try my best to install XAMPP easily so you can also install it easily.

In this step-by-step tutorial, I’ll show you exactly how to install XAMPP and set up a local WordPress development site. So Let's Begin

1- Download XAMPP in your PC

So, the First step is to download and install XAMPP software on your PC. You can download the Windows installer file from Apache Friends. Its size is about 110 Mb, so it will take time, depending on your connection.

When the downloading is finished you can open the file location and Run File. If you’re running antivirus software, you might get a warning like this:

Just click Yes to continue. Depending on your Windows configuration, you might also get a prompt about User Account Control (UAC). Just continue through that prompt as well. Once you get through all of the prompts, you should see the standard installer screen:

Just click Next to continue.

On the next screen, you can choose which components to install. To install XAMPP and WordPress, you do not need all of the components. In addition to the required components, all you need are:

MySQL
PHPMyAdmin

However, some of the other components can be useful. For example, if you want to send/debug transactional emails, you might want to install the email-related components. It’s totally up to you, though.

Again, this is all that’s needed to install WordPress locally. Uncheck everything else and click Next.

You can now select which folder to install XAMPP in. I always leave it as the default:

On the next screen, you can choose your preferred language.

Then, you’ll get a prompt asking you to install Bitnami for XAMPP. You do not need this to install XAMPP and WordPress, so feel free to uncheck the box. If you leave it enabled, it slightly simplifies the WordPress install process, but I’m going to cover how it works without Bitnami.

Once you click Next, you’re ready to run the install:

The installation process might take a few minutes:

Once it finishes, you can launch the control panel to start working with XAMPP:

2- Start Module and Test your server

To install XAMPP and WordPress properly, you’ll need to run two modules:

Apache
MySQL

You can start both modules from the XAMPP control panel:

Once you launch them, you should see their status turn to green:

And now you should be able to test that your local server is working by going to http://localhost/ in your web browser of choice:

If all went well, you now have a functioning XAMPP server on your Windows PC! But now it’s time to install XAMPP and WordPress. So here’s how to get a WordPress site up and running on XAMPP.

3- Add WordPress File

If you’ve ever manually installed WordPress, the rest of the process should feel pretty familiar. First, you need to go to wordpress.org and download the latest version of WordPress.

Then, in Windows, navigate to the folder where you installed XAMPP. For me, that’s C://xampp. It should be something similar for you. Then, in that folder, find the docs subfolder:

In docs, create a new folder for your test site. This folder name will become the sub-name used to access your site. For example, if you make the folder test site, you’ll access your site by going to http://localhost/testsite.

Once you create the folder, extract the WordPress .zip file you downloaded from wordpress.org into it:

4- Create a database for WordPress

Next, you need to create a MySQL database for your WordPress install. To do that, launch PHPMyAdmin from your XAMPP control panel:

Then click on Databases at the top:

And enter a name for your database and click Create. Your name can be anything – just remember it because you’ll need it for the next step:

Unlike installing WordPress on a live web server, when you install XAMPP and WP, you don’t need to worry about creating a database user.

5- Install WordPress locally via the on-screen installer

When you visit your test site, you should see the normal WP installer. Remember, your test site is just http://localhost/FOLDERNAME:

The only step where this process will differ from a normal install is the database details. When you get to the database details, enter them like this: