How To Install WordPress Locally On Desktop

Written by Pavan Kumar on October 9, 2008

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WordPress is the dominating blog software ruling the blogosphere. The fame of wordpress lies in the fact that it is free, comfortable, customizable and tons of plugins are available to make your blogging a wonderful tour.

We all use web softwares, but most of us don’t know how to install wordpress or any other web software as all installation part is usually carried by one click installers provided by the webhost in the control panel.

The intention of this article is to help those geeks who want to experiment different things on wordpress or any web softwares or even to tweak their favorite wordpress theme. It is really painful to do all these work on our live blog online. It would be better if we can tweak them offline on our system, this also makes the work very fast as there is no data transfer between the server and system.

For this you need to setup your computer as a web server. You need a webserver software like apache or IIS to run always in the background and you need to install php and mysql to run wordpress. Here is the easy possible solution I use:

1. Download and install latest version of WAMP [windows] [LAMP for Linux, and MAMP for Mac OS].

Install Wamp server on windows desktop

2. Download the latest version of wordpress.

3. Extract the wordpress zip content and paste the same into www folder. The www folder can be found in the directory of WAMP. If you install WAMP on C:\Program Files\wamp, you have to copy the wordpress folder into C:\Program Files\wamp\www. There will be a folder called wordpress in latest.zip, but you need to copy the contents of wordpress folder to the folder you intend to make your wp installation. Eg: If you want your wordpress to be in location, http://loclahost/wp, you need to copy all content of wordpress folder into a folder C:\Program Files\wamp\www\wp.

4. Run Wamp Server software from start menu.

5. On your browser open http://localhost/.

6. Under tools, open phpMyAdmin [short link: http://localhost/phpmyadmin/] and create a new database for your wordpress install.

Database creation using phpMyAdmin

7. Open http://localhost/wp as in this example.

Create configuratoin file

8. Click Create Configuration file>Lets Go.

Basic Instructions

9. You will now be asked for configuration of your database connection.

Database Name: Enter the database name you created in step 6.
User Name: root
Password: BLANK – don’t enter the word BLANK, just leave blank space 😉
Database host: localhost
Table prefix: Keep it as it is – wp_

Configure wordpress to connect to database

10. Configuration done. Run the Install.

Configuration done! Start Installing

11. Enter your blog name and mail id. The other option provided there – listing in search engine has nothing to do in local installation. Click Install WordPress.

Basic Information about your blog - name and mail id

12. Success. You are now provided with wordpress login details. These details are the most important ones as your first login should always be done with these credentials. It is recommended to change your password as you login for the first time.

Everything done! Note the random password generated

Note: This is the basic installation method and with this much of knowledge you can install almost any web softwares like phpbb, joomla, drupal, bbpress or any scripts. You just need to refer the documentation provided with them. In the same way you can manually install wordpress on your web host.

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Category: computer, featured, internet, software

Tags: blog, download, internet, software, web mastery, windows, wordpress

42 Readers responded to this post

Really informative post. I think it might be helpful in building a good WordPress blog

By JK on October 9th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

@JK

Thank you, better you too think of switching to wordpress… We wordpress guys enjoy the most…

By Pavan Kumar on October 9th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

Thanks Pavan !

After installing how to change theme ? How to install plugins ?

By dollar on October 9th, 2008 at 9:06 pm

@dollar

You just have to copy the theme or plugin folder into the wp-content\plugins or wp-content\themes folder and you can activate in plugins or design page in wp-admin after login.

Or alternately [easy] you can use one click plugin updater for the same purpose. Refer this about one click plugin updater:
http://www.techpavan.com/2008/08/23/one-click-plugin-updater-install-plugins-themes-one-click/

By Pavan Kumar on October 9th, 2008 at 10:46 pm

This is a really cool tutorial though I have never played with any on the scripts on my local machine. This will definitely come in handy.

By Amit on October 10th, 2008 at 1:52 am

@Amit

You can easily learn to use different scripts. If anything goes wrong, nothing is going to be lost here…

By Pavan Kumar on October 10th, 2008 at 9:26 am

I use Easy Php for this

By Madhur Kapoor on October 11th, 2008 at 11:11 am

@Madhur Kapoor

I have never tried that. Let me try that too. Thanks for the info… I will google it and find out more…

By Pavan Kumar on October 11th, 2008 at 1:44 pm

Drupal is the best CMS and much powerful than any.. But nevertheless wordpress do attract bloggers…

By arun on October 11th, 2008 at 10:53 pm

@arun

I have used Joomla, but never tried Drupal. Popularity of wp lies in that it is free and loads of plugins and themes are free. Even cms do well even for company websites…

By Pavan Kumar on October 11th, 2008 at 11:06 pm

thanks pavan for this post. i am looking for this type of stuff to setup wordpress locally so that i can test my wordpress theme.
Thanks again

By Ajay on October 12th, 2008 at 8:13 am

Im using XAMPP for installing wordpress on my desktop..

By Bryantara on October 12th, 2008 at 9:08 am

@Ajay

You are most welcome. This should finally help you…

@Bryantara

Wow! I am getting to know more web server packages to run on a system. Thanks for tipping me about XAMPP. But WAMP supports python too. Anyway, for wordpress anyone among WAMP, XAMPP or easy php [as shared by madhur in above comment] is good.

By Pavan Kumar on October 12th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

I remember reading about this last year. It would be great to have a local install for testing purposes.

By TheWindowsFix on October 14th, 2008 at 3:37 am

When ever i want to do some tweaks in my Blog, i first do it on my Wamp server.
this trick is great.

By Chetan on October 19th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

@Chetan

Same is the case here… I am currently working on a theme locally on my wamp-wordpress

Welcome to my blog

By Pavan Kumar on October 19th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

Please allow me to share this vidto tutorial on how to install WordPress Locally with your community.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biQWyBcYSX4
Regards
Shane

By Shane on October 23rd, 2008 at 11:02 pm

i have seen in many bloggers site like amitbhawani n etc. they dont have their external link in their sites to be visible in the bottom bar when mouse hoovers over it. Instead it ll be displaying like

http://planetozh.com/blog/go.php?http://buysellads.com/

http://planetozh.com/blog/go.php?

but when you click it it lands to buysellads.com

how this is done??

any pluggin??

By arun on November 7th, 2008 at 11:16 am

I have been using WAMP for 2 years now. It’s great to test things before going online. Saves some bandwidth.

By Guttu on November 24th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

Your WAMP and WordPress install directions are the best I’ve found. Thanks for such a clear, concise post.

By Ray on February 27th, 2009 at 4:51 pm

nice guidelines for installing WordPress…bt wat abt other possible web server softwares..Is tat WAMP is the best ??

By Hareesh on March 4th, 2009 at 10:41 pm

@Hareesh

Well I cannot say wamp is the best without experiencing other softwares. But in my experience, wamp consumes resources. No idea about others.

By Pavan Kumar on March 4th, 2009 at 11:05 pm

Bro de same way can i do to my website..Some thing like a write a post in my desktop..And once i connect online changes made should be reflected in my site ..Is it possible ..?

By Sham on March 17th, 2009 at 7:04 pm

@Sham

AFAIK, such thing is not possible. But I would recommend you using clients for composing posts. You can try windows live writer which can make your job easy, you can compose offline and later update online. Try it…

By Pavan Kumar on March 17th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

Couple of days ago I installed WordPress on my laptop using Microsoft Web Installer. It was kids play. With few clicks, I was able to see a local WordPress installation on my PC. Check the installer at http://www.microsoft.com/web/

By Gopinath M on March 28th, 2009 at 5:02 pm

@Gopinath M

Wow, that’s a nice thing. I did not know about this, will give it a try soon. Welcome here

By Pavan Kumar on March 28th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

Hey buddy am a linux user but when I tried installing wordpress on pc..after doing all the installation the page http://localhost/ is not showing up in any browser
and before u suggest port:80 iis confliction so dont worry ,I tried everything even changed httpd.conf and hacked it to listen to port 8080 but nothing worked do u have any idea,am testing it on XP SP3,though I got wordpress rolling in linux very easily..but this #@$#!* windows is just drivin me crazy…hope to hear a +ive response from u otherwise u still need to learn a lot,plz dont mind take care.

By hujaku on April 3rd, 2009 at 5:20 pm

@hujaku

I think the last statement is right, I still need to learn a lot 😉 This was the way which worked for me with no hazzles on my xp sp2 PC. I hope the other server softwares are compatible with sp3. Better you try xampp, microsoft web etc. I think experts at different forums would help you

By Pavan Kumar on April 3rd, 2009 at 10:24 pm

A informação contida acima foi de grande valia muito obrigado, tive um pouco de dificuldade só para criar o banco de dado mais o restante foi de boa Obrigado mesmo.

By Gleydson silva on April 6th, 2009 at 5:08 am

Absolutely brilliant! Thank you so much!

By Claire on April 8th, 2009 at 1:43 am

WordPress Blogs are really powerful. It eases with its outstanding capabilities of indexing, searching, archiving and presenting relevant information. Installation is a bit complicated, but some bucks should not stop you, availing Web 2.0.

By AkYjOe on June 13th, 2009 at 2:34 pm

Hi,

Thanks for the tutorial!

I can see the page that asks me to key in my blog title and email but then the installation stalls at that point. I am not getting the “Success” page. When I go to localhost/wordpress/wp-admin, the page comes up fine but I dont know my login and password (which I assume is supposed to be wordpress generated ?) =(

Any idea on what I missed or how to fix this?

Thanks in advance!

By Alicia on July 10th, 2009 at 7:37 pm

@ Alicia,

Don’t bother about that, the default user name is admin.

And now, move on here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Resetting_Your_Password and scroll down to see how to reset password using phpmyadmin, reset the password and use

By Pavan Kumar on July 10th, 2009 at 9:20 pm

Thank you so much for the detail Although a little out of date with WordPress 2.8 I was finally ablt to install WordPress locally. This was after weeks of trying other instructions.

By MikeY on August 2nd, 2009 at 12:41 am

@ MikeY

Glad to know it helped you. With reference to wp 2.8, if one knows the basic installation steps to any script, rest all can be managed without much difficulty. Every cms provide their installation instructions which can be easily followed if one has little experience which you have it now

Thanks for the appreciation

By Pavan Kumar on August 2nd, 2009 at 1:10 am

Hi,

I looked at your instructions and others in putting wordpress on localhost and all went well. But I accidentally hit a right-click mouse setting that said “block all localhost images”. Now all the images for the entire wordpress admin pages and the web site itself are gone. How do I put the images back so I can see them?

If you can help, thank you.

Paul

By Paul on August 7th, 2009 at 3:13 am

@ Paul,

Check out the solution here: http://www.techpavan.com/2009/08/07/how-to-block-unblock-images-from-websites-on-firefox/

By Pavan Kumar on August 7th, 2009 at 5:28 pm

cool post really informative man ..

By Rajesh Kanuri on October 19th, 2009 at 5:30 pm

very informative, question though after installing the word press blog locally how do you upload to internet?

By kevinb on November 5th, 2009 at 7:51 am

@ Kevinb

You will need to move the entire files to the new server along with the database you backed up from your local / old blog. The wordpress documentation is detailed enough to explain you the steps: http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress

By Pavan Kumar on November 5th, 2009 at 10:56 pm

nice information i have chosen right place. thanks for sharing

By nitin on December 31st, 2009 at 3:33 pm

http://localhost/ is not opening. The wamp server remains in offline mode even after starting all its services any solutions for that??

By Pavan on April 9th, 2011 at 2:02 am