How to Install WordPress in Windows Using WAMP?

WordPress has been widely used to create millions of websites and blogs to increase visibility for various brands. However, making major changes especially to a large site can be a challenge and may break your website. Therefore, it is advisable to install WordPress on your PC to create a local testing environment. This enables you to try new themes, plugins and other changes before publishing them on your live site.

Related: Install WordPress on MacBook using MAMP.

Why Install WordPress in Windows?

Installing WordPress on your live hosting servers with Bluehost, HostGator and SiteGround is an easy job. Generally, these companies offer cPanel hosting with one-click WordPress installation through apps like Softaculous. However, installing WordPress on local Windows PC or laptop is a tedious job. You may want to have local installation for one of the below reasons:

• Running WordPress in your local computer allows you to try new features and designs without affecting the real website.
• You can fearless learn to build new websites and develop with WordPress before shifting them to a live server.
• It enables you to maintain a buffer for your site in case something wrong happens.
• Plan to have a copy of your live website locally on your PC.

In this post, we will look at how to install WordPress in Windows using the WAMP server.

Steps for Installing WordPress Locally

Below are the steps to install WordPress on local Windows PC.

1. Download WampServer
2. Install WampServer
3. Run WampServer
4. Setup WordPress database
5. Download WordPress and setup configuration
6. Connect Your Database
7. Install WordPress
8. Login to Your Localhost Site

Related: Install WordPress locally using Local by Flywheel.

Step 1 – Download WampServer

WAMP (Short for Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP) is an open source platform for developing applications with PHP and MySQL database in local Apache server. You can use WampServer software to install WordPress on your Windows PC locally.

• Visit the WAMP official site and click the “START USING WAMPSERVER” link.

• This will take you to the download page. Select either the 64 or 32 Bits installer version depending on the version of Windows you are running.

Note: You can check the Windows version by right-clicking “This PC” on the File Explorer and go to “Properties”.

Step 2 – Install WampServer On Your PC

• Run the “wampserver” execution file to start the installation and carefully follow screen instructions.

• The installation process will complete in 1 to 3 minutes.

Step 2 – Run WampServer

• Double click the WampServer shortcut on your desktop and confirm that all features are working.
• The Green icon shows that everything is working correctly but a red or orange icon indicates a WanpServer error.

Step 3 – Setup Local WordPress Database

• Click the WampServer icon on the taskbar notification area and select “phpMyAdmin”.

• Choose your preferred language, type ‘root’ as the “Username” and leave the “Password” field blank then click “Go”.

• Now you need to create a database for your local site. Click “New” on the left panel menu.
• Type the name of the new database in the name text field and click the “Create” button.

• Your localhost database is ready for WordPress installation.

Related: Install WordPress in Bluehost.

Step 4 – Download WordPress and Setup Configuration

• Go to the WordPress.org, click the “Get WordPress” link and download the latest version of WordPress, a zip file containing the “wordpress” folder.

• Open the zip file, extract and copy folder named, “wordpress”.

Step 5 – Upload WordPress in WampServer

• Open the folder where you installed WAMP (for this case the folder path is “C:\wamp”) and open the “www” folder.

• Paste the “wordpress” folder you have copied inside the “www” folder and rename it to your preferred name like ‘testsite’.

Learn WordPress: Check out 500+ free WordPress tutorials.

Step 6 – Connect Your Database

• Open your web browser and type the URL for your local site, “localhost/sitename/” and press Enter.
• Remember to replace ‘sitename’ in the URL with the name you gave to the wordpress folder above (‘testsite’)
• Pick a language of choice and click “Continue”.

• On the welcome page, click “Let’s go” to progress to the next page.

• Fill in the database details; enter the name of the database you created in step 2 above, ‘root’ for the username and leave the other fields untouched.

• Click the “Submit” button.

Step 7 – Installing WordPress Using WAMP

• After successful configurations, click “Run the installation” on the resulting page.

• Complete the form that appears with information about your new local WordPress website such as title, username, and password and so on.
• Then click “Install WordPress” at the bottom of the page.

• You will get a “Success” notification upon successful installation.

Step 8 – Login to Your Local WordPress Site

• Click the “Login” button enter your site credentials and click “Login” again.

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• This opens the WordPress dashboard from which you can manage various elements of the site including, structure, themes, plugins and appearance among other things.

Migrating to Live Server

After playing around with your test site, you can delete the entire site and install a new setup to start building your real content. When you finish the site content, you need a domain name and hosting account to migrate the content to live server. Most of the popular shared hosting companies like Bluehost and SiteGround offer one-year free domain name when you register for a hosting account. Follow the instruction in our earlier article on how to move your localhost site to live WordPress server.

In Summary

Installing WordPress on your local PC can be a useful tool for developing and testing new features before publishing them on the real website. Beginners can use the local site to learn how to develop a WordPress site while experts benefit by developing and testing new plugins and themes.

You need to install the WampServer, which provides a local server environment required for WordPress to run locally on your Windows PC. Whether you are a new WordPress learner or an experienced WP sites builder, the above steps outline how you can install and run WordPress on Windows using WAMP.