A local installation of WordPress will allow you to make changes more rapidly, since you won’t have to deal with uploading files to a remote server.  Also,  you probably won’t want visitors to stumble upon your site while you’re building it.  In general, its never a good idea to have people wander around a construction zone while you’re hammering away.

Installing your own server on Windows is a lot easier than it sounds, even if you’re new to Wordpress Development.   There are four big steps:

• Install WAMP
• Create a database in WAMP
• Install WordPress
• Connect WordPress to that database you just created

Install WAMP

1. Start by downloading WAMP (Windows Apache, MySQL and PHP)

2. Install WAMP with all the default settings

3. Double Click the WampServer icon on your Desktop

4. A meter icon should appear in the bottom right corner of your desktop toolbar/system tray/whatever its called

5.  If the icon doesn’t turn white after a few seconds, LEFT CLICK on the icon and click “Put Online”

6.  Access phpMyAdmin by LEFT CLICKING the meter icon. This will open up an internet browser window

Create a New Database

From the homepage you can create a new database.  You can name it what you want. Press “Create”.

1.  Congrats! You now have a new database. Now, you’ll have assign a ‘user’ to your new database.  Start by clicking on Home in the upper left corner. Then click Privileges

2. Click Add a New User .

3. Now you get to set the new user  login information.  For host, select Local. Set your password. Leave all the Global Privileges default. Jot down your username and password (you’ll need this in a few minutes). Click Go.

4.  Ok, now we just need to set the user privileges and we’ll be  good to go.  Click on the Privileges tab. Find the username you just created and click on the Check Privileges icon.

Click the tin icon of the man and pencil

My database is shakawuwu

5. Hang in there! We’re almost done! In the database specific privileges section go to the Add privileges to the following database dropdown & choose the database you just created. Look out, your page will automatically refresh.

6. Select all privileges y clicking Check all and finally hit Go.

Install WordPress

1. Now that the semi-complicated stuff is done, it’s business as usual. Grab a copy of WordPress.

2. Extract the files to you WAMP directory. For me, it was c:\wamp\www.  You can reach your directory by clicking on ‘www directory’, as shown below:

Configure WordPress

1. Open up the wp-config-sample.php from your wordpress directory
2. Remember all that work you did creating a database, username and password? It’s all about to pay off. Substitute those values in the wp-config-sample.php file:

hint: 'putyourdbnamehere', 'usernamehere', 'yourpasswordhere', leave 'localhost' the same

Congrats! You did it!

Now open up that fresh can of WordPress and start designing some bad ass websites!