I hope that you might be familiar with WordPress.In case you are not familiar with this amazing CMS then kindly you need to read my previously posted article “Understanding the WordPress basics“. After you have read the post now you need to face this amazing CMS and you can do this in variety of ways like:

Getting your own hosting and installing WordPress over it
Converting your computer into a server and installing WordPress over it

The second choice look good as it’s free and experiments should not cost you any amount. Thus, today I am going to show you that how can you install wordpress on computer and can experience same thing as you have installed it over a purchased hosting.

Installing WordPress on Computer by converting computer into a web server:

Downloading the Packages:

Converting your computer into a server is possible and you can easily do it with the help of a software. The name of the software is xampp. First be sure that you download the following two things:

Platform I am going to use is Windows 8.

What we need to install WordPress in general:

WordPress needs some basic requirement to be able to run on a platform. These basic requirements should be present in a server where you are going to install wordpress. All we need most are the two things:

PHP (For processing server side things)
MySQL (For saving the posts data and other things)

Thus, PHP communicates with the MySQL and the MySQL server saved the data, later php calls the saved data from the MySQL.

Tutorial – Installing WordPress on Local Computer or Laptop:

Hope you have downloaded the required packages. Install xampp, you just need to double click the downloaded file and install that with next buttons.

After xampp is installed you need to start the MySQL and apache from the xampp. Thus, search for “Xampp control panel” open it up and start MySQL and apache if not running already.

After you have started apache and mySQL. Go to your favourite browser and open this url “localhost/xampp” if you are able to open it then you have successfully converted your computer into a working server.

You might like: If you are facing issues while starting Mysql server on xampp, then read this guide: Solve MySQL Server Error on Xampp

Installing WordPress using xampp:

Assuming that you have downloaded wordpress already. Now open your browser and go to “localhost/phpmyadmin” here you are going to setup your mySQL database for WordPress so that posts may be stored into this database which you will make at WordPress.

Click on Databases and there you need to create new database. Give the name of the database to be “talkofweb” and click create.

Now you need to create a user in the phpmyadmin so that WordPress may be able to save the data using the username and password of the user of mySQL database. Go to Users and click on add users. There add a new user like this:

After you have filled the required fields and have clicked check all to give the user permissions of reading and writing to the database. Click Add user. The information to be filled is as follows:

username: talkofwebuser
host: localhost
password: talkofweb

After you have added user. Head up to your downloaded WordPress.zip and unzip it there. Open the zip file and confirm that there isn’t just single folder in it, If you get only single folder then again open it and next you will see some bunch of php files and three folder. Copy this parent folder, which you have recently opened. And go to “C://xampp/htdocs” and paste it there. Suppose the name of pasted folder is wordpress.

Now we need to attach database to the wordpress. For this rename the file “wp-config-sample.php” in the htdocs and name it to “wp-config.php” thus after that edit the file with some text editor. (Get notepadd++ asap) Scroll it down until you find something like this and refill it to make like this:

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'talkofweb');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'talkofwebuser');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'talkofweb');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

The above code is filled code just fill the database name to be “talkofweb” , username to be “talkofwebuser” and password to be “talkofweb“. (important: I am writing this tutorial for just installing it on your laptop or pc which isn’t accessible by whole world so please if you are installing this anywhere else then don’t forget to use different name for database and different user and password.)

Now save the file (press ctrl+s) and exit the editor. Now go to your browser and open “localhost/wordpress” since I supposed that your exracted and pasted folder has name “wordpress”, you will be welcomed to wordpress installation. Just name your site as “Experimental talkofweb offline WordPress Installation” and create a username and password. You can use any username and password which you may remember later.

After that click install wordpress. and Whoa! you are done. WordPress has been installed on your computer. Go to your browser and open “localhost/wordpress/wp-admin” and then you will be able to login to your offline site using the username and password you created in last step while installing wordpress.