Install Wordpress locally in your computer with Wamp Server
Planning to redesign your site or create a New theme for your Wordpress powered Blog ?.Do it offline by Installing Wordpress locally in your Computer with Wamp Server.
What is a Wamp Server ?
WAMP server is Windows Apache MySQL PHP Server all bundled into one nice package.You don’t need to test your Wordpress blogs theme Online.Instead try these offline with Wamp Srver.It creates a Mirror copy of your Website in your machine and its very easy to Configure.So lets get started !
Download
1. Download The latest version of Wordpress from The Official Wordpress Site.
2. Download the Wamp Server and Install it.It is recommended to Install It in the Default path “ C:Wamp”
Configuring the Wamp Server
Start the Wamp server and Click on the Wamp Icon on System tray.Then Click On “Start all Services”
Creating the database
Click on the System tray Icon and Click On “phpMyadmin”.A Page Will open in your Browser.(If you are Not familiar with the Php My Admin Interface Don’t panic!).Just Enter a database name in Create New database and Hit on Create.The database name can be anything ( Here i am Using “Test” as the database name)
Configuring The database
Okay ! Now that You have successfully created the database Open “SQLitemanager” by clicking the System tray Icon.This Will open the SQLite page in your Browser
Upload the database
In The SQLite page you need to upload the database that You just Created In phpMyadmin.Enter the name of the database (in this case its “Test”)and Click on” Browse “.
Now navigate to “C >wamp >bin >mysql >mysql> 5.0.51b> data” where you will find the Folder of the database you Created earlier. Open that Folder and select the “db.opt” File. Check the Checkbox “Upload database” and Hit on “Save “.
If everything goes well then you will see your database in the Left Column.If you don’t see the database in the Left column then Something went wrong.Start it all over.
Configuring and Installing Wordpress
1.Next Navigate to “C:wampwww” and Create a Folder.Name it “Test”.
2.Copy all the Wordpress Files in that Directory.After You have copied the Files the directory will look like below 
3.Fill in the database details :Now open wp-config-sample.php in any Text editor like Notepad .
In DB_NAME you will find ‘putyourdbnamehere’.Replace it with the database name that you created earlier.(in this case its “test”).
In DB_USER replace “usernamehere” with “root”.
In DB_PASSWORD delete ‘yourpasswordhere’.Leave it blank.
Having done that save that file.Rename it to “wp-config.php”.The following screenshots will be more clear.
4. Install Wordpress :Open http://localhost/test/wp-admin/install.php. Enter a Blog title and any email.Then Hit “Install Wordpress”.Wordpress will be Successfully installed and you will see the Final screen.
Note the Username and password Given .After logging in Click On “users” and Change the password to a more Convenient one.All the best ! Hope you could make it.
How To Transfer a Local Wordpress Blog in Your Web server
Now, that you have learnt how to install a local Wordpress blog in your computer, you may wwnt to transfer it in your web server. This can be useful because you can copy the exact settings, themes, plugins as well as posts from that of your local blog to the blog at your web server. There are other workarounds which involves backing up the database of the local Wordpress blog and mounting the database in your web server. There are other backup measures available and would have to take a complete backup of your current blog using phpmyadmin.
Related Articles
- How to Install a Local Wordpress Blog and Transfer it in Web Server
- How to Completely Back Up Your Wordpress Blog Database
- Wordpress tip-Store Blog post Images in a different Folder or Subdomain
- Upcoming Features in Wordpress 2.8 : A Short Glimpse
- How to Completely Back up Your Blog in Wordpress and Blogger
Try XAMPP, its another popular application for installing WordPress locally.
quality blog post, very informative, thanks for the share
Very useful information..
Stumbled this article.
Bookmarked the article. It will be of use in future.
As Manu pointed Out XAMPP is another utility..that we should Check
@satish and Awesome tips : Thanks…..This keeps me Going !
Actually there’s another one. Don’t remember the name but it starts with a B.
Excellent tutorial!Straight to the point!!Bravo!!:-)
Thank you Akis
Thank you, this actually worked! the best explanation.
Glad to help Tari … I hope you will make the best out of it. It becomes very necessary especially If you are planning to redesign your site
The best tutorial that I have ever come across.
Hats off. Great work…Keep going
Thanks Kiran for your kind Words ..
I have come across many tutorials for installing WP.
But they were now worth. I have always recomended.
I do not understand why your page still has only PR-1
@kiran : The PR is 2 not One. Anyway Its up To Big G to decide the Numbers
Received this Error when I got to step 4:
Warning: require(C:\wamp\www\test/wp-includes/category.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:\wamp\www\test\wp-settings.php on line 333
I checked and my line 333 is as follows:
require (ABSPATH . WPINC . ‘/category.php’);
I don’t see what the problem is, can you help?
@ Sue : Looking at your comment it seems there is something wrong in your wordpress files. Have you tried it by downloading a fresh copy of wordpress ?
Sorry Amit I should have said. That was the new 2.8 freshly downloaded. I even tried the 2.7.1 I had already on file and got the same response. Running it on XP as well. Found trying anything with vista is a waste of time. LOL. Your tutorial is the easiest and most concise I’ve found, you’re a wonder and thank you for replying to my comment, I’ve been working on this for 2 weeks with different tutorials and have had no luck.
Have You checked Whether The Wamp Serer Is properly Installed or not ? Try Creating a New folder in the wamp directory and put any HTML file in that directory and see whether that File is fetched In your Browser or not.
For example : create a Folder named sue under c:\wamp\www\sue and put an html file say index.htm. Then open localhost/sue/index.htm in browser keeping Wamp On. If you can see the File then Wamp is OK. otherwise not.
If Wamp is Ok then there is some problems Mounting the database.
I GOT IT WORKING AMIT!! You rock! Thank you so much.
@Sue….. Glad it worked. What went wrong ?
Not entirely sure but when in doubt start from scratch.
How do I install more than one site on wamp?
@Marie : To Install More than One site in wamp go to the www directory of your wamp installation and create a new folder. Every folder residing in the wamp directory represents a website.Just put the Files of your new website in that folder and open localhost/foldername and you will can see your new site
For example : Create a Folder named ” Mary” in www directory … copy an index.htm file in “mary” folder and opening localhost/mary/index.htm
Hope that helps
Hi
When I go to step 3 – start phpMyadmin, I just get a blank browser page.Any suggestons?
Cheers
Bill running vista, firefox
Amit Banerjee and Soumen Halder, hi.
I am following the process discribed on your site about to install wampserver on my computer to have wordpress locally on it.
I can not continue with the process, I am stuck in the next step: “Configuring The database. Okay ! Now that You have successfully created the database Open “SQLitemanager” by clicking the System tray Icon.This Will open the SQLite page in your Browser”
When I go to wampserver icon on the tray the SQLiteManager is not there. What I have is: Localhost, phpAdmin, a folder called www directory, a folder Apache, a folder MySQL. Then the Quick Admin with Start All services, stop and restart, and finally the Put Online/Offline feature.
I opened the MySQL folder but there is nothing like SQLiteManager.
Do you have any idea ?
My best regards,
Julio
@julio alarcon :See the third photo in this page.
the address of the SQLlite manager is
http://localhost/sqlitemanager/.Put that in your browser and hot enter.
If you don’t see anything then there is some problem indeed. By the way are you using vista or XP ??
Good solution, thanks
I got it from u. You are wonderful!
@kola :I am Glad that you were benefited with this article
I have folowed the instructions, and tried starting from scratch again, but when I open up phpMyAdmin I receive the message “Cannot start session without errors, please check erros given in your php and/or webserver log and configure your php installation properly.”
The wordpress and the WAMP installation seemed OK up until then, I didn’t think I had to do anything that you haven’t written above…should I?
Thanks
Sorry – more info…I am running on vista. I installed to C:\Wamp
@Rachael : To install Wordpress in vista you need Xampp
I am a bit of a newbie. I need some clarification. I already have wamp installed on my PC. I have used it for testing a personal site locally which I later uploaded. I then wanted to learn how to use wordpress. So, I went ahead and downloaded wordpress, installed it and now have a blog in a subfolder of my personal site.
But I wanted to try using wordpress to make websites which are not blogs. This time, I want to try testing them locally before uploading them with a new domain name.
My question is this. Since I already have the extracted wordpress files on the wamp folder of my pc, can I copy the same extracted files and then make the changes accordingly in wp.config.sample.php file and then save it for the new site or do I need to download and install wordpress again?
@ priya: Good point. Let me clarify this one by one.
Wordpress blogs runs on a database. The local blog’s database is stored in your computer. Now if you want to upload your local blog into any web directory you have to first transfer the core wordpress files. next you have to backup the database of your local blog from phpmyadmin. once you have backed up the daatabase and you have the sql file you can mount this database in your web server. Then update the wp-config.php file and you are done. the local blog is updated in the web.
Hope that helps. Please let us know if your problem was solved or not. We will further help you as we know how difficult things can appear in the early days .
Thanks, Amit.
You are talking about what needs to be done once I have made a blog locally and then need to upload it to the web,isn’t it? I understand that I need to create another database for this new website that I am creating, am I right? One more thing, by saying updated in the web, do you mean the same thing as uploading the site to the online server using my webhost? But do I need to download wordpress once again? Or can I use the same wordpress folders which are already unzipped and saved on my computer?
I hope my questions are not too dumb. Actually, your tutorial is wonderful and very well explained. It is just that I continue to have these nagging doubts.
@ priya: Yhanks for the compliment. Well, here are the steps you need to follow :
1. Upload the entire wordpress files in your web directory from your computer. No need to download wordpress again.
2. Back up the database from the local blog in your computer from phpmyadmin.
3. Log in to c panel of your webhost and mount the database backup.
4. Open wp-config.php and then fill in the database details. You need to create a user, password for the database in the c panel and enter those details.
You are done.
Let me know whether that step worked or not.
Amit, Thanks a lot. I think you are telling me how to upload wordpress from my local server on to the web, am I right? Or I may be mistaken. I wanted to know how to use wordpress on the local host and whether I can use the same files which I had earlier saved in one of my folders after unzipping the wordpress file.
Anyway, after going through your original post and your replies to me, this is what I have done.
I created a new database after going to the phpMyadmin Page on WAMP on my PC, configured the database by going to the SQLite page, and uploaded the same as per your instructions. I could then see the database in the left hand column.
I then created a folder by the same name as my database and copied all the wordpress files which I already had on my PC in a separate folder.
I edited the wp-config.php file and installed wordpress. Now, when I click on http://localhost/mydatabase, I am lead to the blog page with the title that I had given.
I am also led to the dashboard when I log in using the username, admin and the password that was given to me. Somebody had once mentioned that it is better to change the username, admin. In this case, since I am on the local server, does it matter?
I hope I have done everything right. I presume I now have go about the task of converting the blog page to a normal page (which is what I wanted in the first place) and later upload it using the services of my webhost with probably a new domain name. For this time, I wanted to learn how to make a normal website |(not a blog) with the help of wordpress.
@ priya : Whoa ! That’s cool.
Yes you can create a simple website with wordpress and not a blog. Typically, a blog lists the latest posts in the homepage whereas a website shows a static page. To show a Static page as your blog’s homepage in wordpress go to Settings–> Reading and select a static page to show as front page.
Now you have to modify the front page on your own to make it look like contemproray websites. I hope i am clear.
Add me on IM : amit@ampercent.com so that we can have a talk on this on Google talk.
Thanks for your Feedback Priya ! Every little bit helps.
Thanks. Let me try this myself. If I run into trouble, I know that help is at hand.
I am running Vista, and for some reason SQLlite didn’t install? Any ideas? If doesn’t come up in the wamp menu at all.
Same problem as Ian said. I am running vista and there is no SQLite installed. I cannot see it. Anyone please give some solution.
@Ian @Crazy Blogger Try XAMPP for Vista, previously one of our users was having similar problems, I tried installing it on his machine. But it failed too. I tried XAMPP then and everythig was fine.
it is very useful to me
thanks
Dhaval raval
Those who want to transfer the local Wordpress blog in their web server, please read this Guide
Hi!!
I am completely new to Drupal/PHP. I installed wamp server as i am running windows xp. I can not find Sqlitemanager. I even tried this url: http://localhost/sqlitemanager/ as i found it in the above discussions. Please help. I m stuck.
@Madhu: Open http://localhost in your browser and you will have the link to sqlitemanager at the bottom of the page