WORDPRESS is a fantastic blogging platform. This free open source application can be used not only for fulfilling your blogging needs over the Internet, but also as a full fledged Collaborative Content Management System (CMS).
You can either have it running on the Internet, to reach a wider audience, or you can simply install it on your personal computer and use it accordingly.
Benefits of installing Wordpress on your computer
Use It As A Collaborative CMS
I have Wordpress installed on my machine and I use it to file away all my data along with relevant files - pdfs, docs etc. Later on when I need immediate access to it, all I have to do is use its powerful search feature based on keywords to bring it up.
In our professional and personal lives, we deal with a lot of data and if we are not careful in organizing it, we could be always lost for that important snippet of information. Wordpress helps you in overcoming just that.
Additionally, when I need to collaborate on that data, I can use features like Roles and Passwords in Wordpress to secure that data and allow access to others based on their privileges. If its some important piece of information like network architecture design or files containing root passwords of different Unix machines, I make use of ‘Post Password’ feature to deny unauthorized access.
Migration From A Shared Domain To Personal Domain
Say you have your blog hosted at wordpress.com (www.yourblogname.wordpress.com) and now you want to explore hosting it on your own domain. It would be nice to first test out the functionality, get familiar with various features etc., before actually doing it over the Internet.
Testing
Testing an application is way easier on the local machine than on something that is remotely hosted. Now you don’t touch files on the web host until that new code change or plugin is fully tested on your local machine first.
Steps outling the installation of wordpress on your workstation
Essential third party tools required to run Wordpress
Wordpress makes use of three other applications so you need to have those installed before you can activate Wordpress on your computer. They are PhP, Apache Server, and MySQL database.
PhP is the main code in which Wordpress is written. Apache is the web server which delivers the output in the browser, and MySQL is the database used to store all your data, including but not limited to your posts, comments etc.
You can independently install all these three applications if you want, but I strongly recommend the popular cocktail variant WampServer 2.0. Wamp stands for Windows Apache MySQL PhP Server. (It has its linux variant also, called LAMPServer). WAMPServer is extremely easy to deploy. Like any other setup, just download it and install it.
To confirm whether Wamp was successfully installed, start the Wamp server, open the browser, and type “http://localhost/”. If everything went as desired, you should see the Wamp home page load up and display information on Configuration details, Tools, Projects etc.
Creating A Database
Since we need the database details before Wordpress can be installed, we will create one now. From the Wamp home page (http://localhost/), click on the PhPMyAdmin link. (Look for it in the Tools section). In the MyPhPAdmin home page, you will see a field for entering the name of the new database. This task is as simple as writing the name of the database and hitting Create 
A thing to note here is that by default your DB user name is root and the password is blank.
Installing Wordpress
Download Wordpress and unzip it if you haven’t already done so. Rename the sample-wp-config.php file to wp-config.php and open it for editing. Update the values in the initial lines, substituting database name, user and password with your own values.
Note - If you want to give a meaningful name to this project, now is the time to do it. Change the name of the unzipped wordpress directory to something like yourProjectName to make it more relevant.
The final step in showing your CMS application in the web browser is to copy the complete folder to the WWW directory, this folder will be residing inside the Wamp server home directory. (In my case it was “c:\wamp\www”) . You are all set to access your application from the browser by typing the complete URL - http://localhost/yourProjectName or by clicking at it from the Projects section in the Wamp server home page - http://localhost/.
If you come across any issues, let me know in the comments section.
February 17th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I found your site on google blog search and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Just added your RSS feed to my feed reader. Look forward to reading more from you.
- Sue.
February 17th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Thanks Sue
February 19th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Good article and you make it sound very easy! But I did not get this part - “copy the complete folder to the WWW directory”.
Could you please explain that in detail! Thanks!!
February 19th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
I am a n00b that loves to play around. So when I saw your post today, I wanted to install WP on my local computer with WAMPServer and test/edit my template before I move it online.
I went in and created a database with the same name as my WP db. I also backed up my DB to the local computer and imported it to the WAMPServer install. I moved my complete wordpress installation from my online host to my local computer.
Now when go to “http://localhost/test/” where “test” is my WP install, I get a “Error establishing a database connection”.
Any ideas? I mean, like I said I am a n00b, so this is probably caused by the dumbest error one could make. So feel free to point me to a resource that can help me, should you think it would be tedious to instruct me yourself
The post has been very informative and I hope to start using this to play around.
February 19th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Hi Anantha, glad you found it useful!
Its a very generic error and from what it seems, the app is not able to connect to the db. My understanding is that the db details are stored in the wp-config file. So double check this file and make sure the entries match your local db value.
Also, since your db data is from the online host, you can make sure the db user value is in syn with the local db. By default the local db user is root, but if you created the db online initially, the web host gives it some random user name. Maybe this also needs to be in sync.
The error is pretty generic, I can only give you leads on this. Not the exact cause.
From the post I gather your immediate requirement is to test the template. You might want to consider creating another project and use a locally created db. This would defn work and you can load the template plus copy paste some posts to test it out.
Let me know how it goes!
February 20th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Tarun:
Thanks. Yes, it was generic and a n00b error only
I found that I was several steps away from making it work and I think now I am one step away. I think I will have it up and running tonight.
thanks for the tip
February 20th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Anantha, thats good news. Share with us what the issue was, and keep us updated about the installation.
Additionally I have some more tweaks, real time security concerns rather and how to tackle them, lined up for Wordpress. So keep checking back.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
It was a database permissions issue I think.
Last night I finally ended up with this error - Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp() in C:\wamp\www\test\wp-blog-header.php on line 18
Now, being a n00b and not knowing what I meant, I just deleted the contents of the “www” folder on Wampserver, deleted the db that I imported and restarted the process all over again from the stage where the db is set up.
After i downloaded my already set up WP folder from my online host, I had some problems with the plugins till I realized that plugins have to be disabled when we upgrade WP. So deleted plugins and loaded the page. After everything loaded properly, I added all the plugins again. A couple of the plugins dont seem to work in the local install, so I just deactivated those.
Now I am at a point, where my WP admin pages are all fine and my main page appears fine too. The individual post pages, though show a 404 error, though I can see the posts on the admin section.
Once I take care of these 404 errors, I think i will be up and running.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Spoken too soon. I think I am all ok now. My permalink settings were screwed up. Once I set that right, my individual pages are showing up fine too.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Great
February 28th, 2008 at 12:32 am
Cool.. great tutor!
April 6th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
**Does anyone know why I get this after I do everything and go to my projects and click wordpress
Warning: require(C:\wamp\www\wordpress/wp-includes/compat.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:\wamp\www\wordpress\wp-settings.php on line 200
Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required ‘C:\wamp\www\wordpress/wp-includes/compat.php’ (include_path=’.;C:\php5\pear’) in C:\wamp\www\wordpress\wp-settings.php on line 200
April 6th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Stef, looks like its a wordpress specific error.
Did you try unzipping a fresh wordpress installation?
April 19th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I found the error. Check files at /wp-includes/. After unzipping (I don’t know the reason) but not all files are in /wp-includes/. I redid it, and the problem is solved.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Hey,
This has been super helpful, I have to install wordpress on seven sites at work!!! I have followed everything up until The last step: the final step in showing your CMS application in the web browser is to copy the complete folder to the WWW directory, this folder will be residing inside the Wamp server home directory. (In my case it was “c:\wamp\www”) . You are all set to access your application from the browser by typing the complete URL - http://localhost/yourProjectName or by clicking at it from the Projects section in the Wamp server home page - http://localhost/.
do you mean copy the unzipped wordpress folder into the c:\wamp\www folder? I tried that and I still get a 404 error. Or did I get that backwards and I am supposed to take the index from c:\wamp\www and copy that somewhere? Or am I totally offbase and I have to use my ftp client to upload something? Any help is really appreciated!
I feel like i’m close, just need a little extra help?
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Nicole
1. Just to make sure we are on the same page, these instructions are for installing Wordpress on a local computer (as opposed to a website).
2. Now you need to copy the Wordpress ‘root folder’ in the ‘www’ directory.
3. By ‘root folder’, I mean the folder which contains directories like wp-admin, wp-include, wp-content and other files like wp-config.php.
4. After you copy the root folder inside the c:\wamp\www\ go to http:\\localhost\
5. On the Wamp home page, in the middle of the page you will a header - Projects. Under Projects you should see the name of your folder. Click on this link.