Skill level: Beginner

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool, which can also be used as a content management system (CMS). One of the reasons why WordPress is so popular is the ease of installations across the various platforms. Before you start installing WordPress on Windows, you should know what exactly we are going to do.

Requirements:

WordPress needs a web server to run and render web pages dynamically. We are going to use Apache, one of the most popular web servers available today. Next, WordPress is written in PHP, which is a server side scripting language, designed specifically for web development. To store your website’s data, WordPress uses MySQL, again one of the most popular relational database management systems in the world.

For windows, a combination of the services of Apache, PHP and MySQL is provided by WampServer(Windows Apache MySQL PHP), which is provides a web development environment. Installation of the WampServer is also very easy and intuitive. The best part is that you will have your WordPress website up and running on your local machine without writing any code!

To start your work, head on to the official website of WampServer, and download the latest release. Rest assured that the latest release of the WampServer will have the latest stable versions of Apache, PHP and MySQL, which would ensure you have absolutely no issues with the dependencies of WordPress. Make sure you select 32 bit or 64 bit version of WAMP depending on the architecture of your windows.

Installing WampServer:

• Select Next on starting the installation wizard.

• Read the license agreement and select “I accept the agreement”. Click Next to proceed.

• Select the destination location for the installation. By default, it is “C:\wamp”. Click Next.

• Select if you want to add Quick Launch or Desktop icons.

• Click Install to start the installation.

• You are asked to select your default browser in the next screen. To be on the safe side, just click open. WampServer automatically detects your default browser.

• You are asked to set your PHP mail parameters in your next step. You can just skip this step for now by clicking Next.

Congratulations. You have installed WampServer. You may now launch WampServer.

To ensure everything is working properly, open your browser after launching WampServer and type in http://localhost/ or http://127.0.0.1/ at your address bar. If you see the WampServer homepage with a lot of information (screenshot below), you have done everything correctly! Pat yourself on the back.

Installing WordPress:

Your next step would be to head over to the WordPress site and download the WordPress software.

Go to the ‘www’ directory/folder inside where you installed WampServer (by default C:/wamp/www/) and extract the downloaded wordpress zip file.

Head over to http://localhost/wordpress/ to check if you did that correctly. You should see an error.

Click the button that says ‘Create a Configuration File’.

The next page tells you what to do in case this process is not completed through the web browser. I have given you the link to the document below. Click ‘Let’s Go’ to begin!

Here is a screenshot of the page below.

Put the Database Name as “wordpress”, User Name as “root”, keep Password as empty and leave the rest of the values as they are. This is assuming you haven’t changed any settings in MySQL after installing WAMP.

Before you click Submit:

You need to create the database before you click Submit. There are two ways of doing this.

You can open PhpMyAdmin through your web browser and create a database. Go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ and select ‘Databases’ from the top navigation bar. Under create database, write the name of the database you filled in the form above (in this case, wordpress) and click Create.

A second, harder way is to do it through the console. Left click on the WampServer icon on the Notification Area, and selecy MySQL -> MySQL Console. You will be prompted for a password. Click enter (since your password is null).

Run the following command: “CREATE DATABASE <database_name>;” with wordpress in place of the database name. Type ‘exit’ to exit the command prompt.

It is time to install WordPress (truly to the sense of the word). Click “Run the Install” in the next page.

Put a site title, set the admin user, put a password, set your email (double check your email) and click “Install WordPress”.

You have successfully installed your site. Go to http://localhost/wordpress/ to double check that it is working.

To login as an admin and manage settings go to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/

NOTE:

If this process doesn’t work (as the web server doesn’t have write permissions to the directory), you can open the file wp-config-sample.php in the wordpress directory using a text editor like Notepad (although I would recommend Notepad++). Change the database settings in the file manually save it as wp-config.php. Note that you would need to know the database name, username and password to do this (a more detailed explanation can be found here.)

For our current configuration, the important lines in the config file should look like the following.

/** The name of the database for WordPress */

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘wordpress’);

/** MySQL database username */

define(‘DB_USER’, ‘root’);

/** MySQL database password */

define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ”);

/** MySQL hostname */

define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’);

$table_prefix  = ‘wp_’;

 

On saving the config.php file in the wordpress directory(C:/wamp/www/wordpress/), go to the installation link (http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php) to install wordpress.