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Install WordPress on Windows PC with WAMP
Many WordPress users and web developers may want to test their WordPress sites on PC locally before going live. WordPress sites require PHP and MySQL database. How to set up a local WordPress test environment with Apache, PHP and MySQL support? Can I install WordPress on Windows computer other than live WordPress hosting server? In this guide, we will show you the complete steps to use WAMP to create local WordPress sites on Windows PC.
Install WordPress on Windows PC with WAMP
WampServer, also known as WAMP, is a Windows web development environment. It allows you to create web applications on local computer that require Apache, PHP and MySQL databases, such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. To install WordPress locally on a Windows computer with WAMP, you need to download and install WAMP onto your computer, then create a MySQL database with WAMP, after that go to download WordPress package and install WordPress on your Windows computer. We will break down into steps as below.
Install WAMP Server on Windows PC
Go to download WAMP installer to your Windows machine. WAMP for Windows comes with two versions, a 32 bit version and a 64 bit version. At the time of writing, its latest version is V 2.5. If you don’t know whether your system is 32-bit or 64-bit, right-click on My Computer on your desktop, and then select Properties from the drop-down menu, look for the System Type in the popup dialogue. If you do not like the hassle, simply download the 32-bit version because it will work on 64-bit versions of Windows as well. The 64 bit OS has the backward compatibility so you can run most 32 bit applications on it.
Note: Wampserver 2.5 is not compatible with Windows XP, neither with SP3, nor Windows Server 2003. You can only install WordPress on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 with the latest WAMP 2.5.
Once you have downloaded WAMP onto your PC, double click on the downloaded installer and follow the instructions to set up WAMP on your computer. Everything is automatic. By default a “www” directory will be automatically created in c:\wamp\www. This is the default root folder for all your local web applications and installations. If you plan to create only one WordPress site on your Windows computer, then you can simply put all your WordPress files inside this ‘www’ folder. If you need to create multiple WordPress sites locally or with other websites, then you can create subdirectories in the“www” root directory and put your PHP files inside each sub-folder for each site.
Create a Database for WordPress using WAMP
WAMP has been installed, the Apache and PHP server environment has been setup. You can verify it by opening this link in your web browser http://localhost. Now let’s go to create a MySQL database using WAMP. As WordPress requires both PHP and MySQL.
WampServer is shipped with these applications :
The PhpMyAdmin within WAMP allows us to set up, manage, backup and restore MySQL databases easily on our local Windows computers. Run WAMP server, then the Wampserver icon shows up in Windows taskbar, click on the WAMP icon, and choose phpMyAdmin to open it in a browser window.
Alternatively you can simply start WAMP server, then open your internet browser and go to the URL directly: http://localhost/phpmyadmin/. Click Databases in phpmMyAdmin, type in a name for your database, click Create button to create a new database for WordPress.
Install WordPress on Windows PC
Go to download WordPress package from http://wordpress.org/download/. It would be a zip file. Move this file to your WAMP root directory, by default it is “C:\WAMP\www”. Extract the WordPress zip archive, you will get a new folder named ‘wordpress’and this would be your default WordPress home directory “C:\WAMP\www\wordpress”. Your URL to the local WordPress installation on PC would be http://localhost/wordpress. If you like to change it, that’s fine. You can move all your WordPress files to the ‘www’ folder, and access your local WordPress site from http://localhost/, you can also rename the local WordPress home directory, then access it from web browser with address like http://localhost/new-folder.
Before we open our local WordPress site on PC and start writing or testing, you need to set up a connection between WordPress and its database. Remember that we have created a MySQL database for WordPress using phpMyAdmin above? Now we need to link the local Apache server to local MySQL server.
Open your WordPress home directory on your hard disk, “C:\WAMP\www\wordpress”. Then you will find a configuration file called ‘wp-config-sample.php’. Rename it to wp-config.php. Open it with a text editor on your PC, such as Notepad.
Then make the following changes:
Database name : Database name you have created using phpMyAdmin
Password : Leave it blank
database host : Keep it default (localhost)
Finalize Installing WordPress on Windows Computer
Now you are all ready to install WordPress onto your Windows PC. Open a web browser and visit http://localhost/, http://localhost/wordpress or other local URL address to your WordPress on local computer. Still remember the trick of the WordPress URLs? It various depending on which directory you store the WordPress files. Double check your WAMP folder if you are not sure. Once you visit the local WordPress site URL in browser, you will see a screen like this:
Simply input required information such as Site Title, name of Administrator and its password, your email address, click Install WordPress button and your local WordPress on Windows PC will be created.
Additional WordPress installation and hosting Tips
There are many open source local WordPress creators or tools that can also help you create local WordPress sites on Mac or Windows computers. Following are just some most notable ones:
How to Install WordPress on Mac with MAMP?
How to install WordPress on Windows PC with XAMPP?
When you have finished the testing or development of WordPress in local computer environment, and want to make it live, you need to find a WordPress hosting service, and migrate the WordPress from local machine to live server.
