How to Install WordPress Locally without a Hosting Account

If you’re on the free Blogger platform and wondering if you should move to WordPress or not, you might want to see all the features available before planning to get a hosting account. You can install WordPress locally on your computer and have full access to all the available features without even having a hosting account. Locally WordPress installation allows you to get used to WordPress dashboard, install themes and plugins and do everything you would do with a WordPress installation on a regular web host.
Alright, let’s stop the talk and go straight to business. You’ll need to download WampServer. This software is a Windows web development environment. It allows you to create web applications with Apache2, PHP and a MySQL database. With this installed on your computer, you can install any script locally including WordPress, SMF, MyBB and so on.
- Download and install WampServer
- Launch the application after installation
- Now go to Firefox or any browser of choice and launch this address – http://localhost
- Scroll down and click phpmyadmin under Tools
- Now go to Databases and create a new one named WordPress
- Download the latest version of WordPress
- Unzip the contents to C:\wamp\www\wordpress
- Type http://localhost/wordpress on your browser’s address bar and launch, you should be prompted to create a configuration file if you did everything right.
- Follow the next couple of steps to run the installation. Fill these as shown below:
MySQL username should be root and password should be left blank.The last part of the installation is where you create your admin account and do some basic site configuration:
That’s all! Now you have a fully functional WordPress installation on your PC. You can do everything you would do with a normal WordPress blog on a web host as i mentioned earlier. You’ll be able to post articles, comment, install plugins, try out themes and so on. And if you already have a wordpress blog already, you should have this in case you need to try out certain tweaks before using it on your main blog.