How to set up WordPress on a Wampserver
Recently, someone asked me how to set up a local Wamp server on their computer so they can test WordPress sites locally before uploading and editing online. MakeUseOf nicely explained what a Wamp server is and how to set it up. I wanted to expand their explanation to include setting up WordPress.
What is this Wamp business?
According to MakeUseOf, WAMP stands for Windows Apache, MySQL and PHP.
A great majority of websites are run by a trio of services – Apache, MySQL and PHP. Apache is the web server, which handles browser requests and sends the information across the internet to your browser. PHP is the programming language that many sites are written in – this creates dynamic content which in turn is sent to Apache, which sends the data to your browser. And finally, MySQL is the database which stores the information for programs. PHP is used to access this database.
How to Set up a Wamp Server
Step 1
Download the WampServer.
Step 2
Run the installer, using the default options provided.
Step 3
Double click the Wamp icon on your desktop .
On your taskbar, near the time in the bottom right corner of your desktop, left click on the 
semicircle button and Click “Put online”.
How to set up WordPress on your Wamp
Step 1
Download WordPress. Extract the files.
Left click on the semicircle on your taskbar.
Open up the www directory.
Drag the WordPress folder into the www directory.
Step 2
1. Open PHPmyadmin from your wamp menu
2. Create a new Database (‘wordpress‘ or ‘blog‘ are good). Leave Collation. Click Create.
3. Click the Home icon in the upper left to return to the main page, then click Privileges. If a user relating to WordPress does not already exist in the list of users, create one:
- Click Add a new User.
- Chose a username for WordPress (‘admin’ is good) and enter it in the User name field. (Be sure Use text field: is selected from the dropdown.)
- For Host, select Local and type in localhost
- Choose a difficult-to-guess password and enter it in the Password field. (Be sure Use text field: is selected from the dropdown.) Re-enter the password in the Re-type field.
- Write down the username and password you chose.
- Leave all options under Global privileges at their defaults.
- Click Go.
4. Return to the Privileges screen and click the Check privileges icon on the user you’ve just created for WordPress. In the Database-specific privileges section, select the database you’ve just created for WordPress under the Add privileges to the following database dropdown. The page will refresh with privileges for that database. Click Check All to select all privileges, and click Go.
5. On the resulting page, make note of the host name listed after Server: at the top of the page. (This will usually be localhost.)
6. Returning to where you extracted the WordPress package, rename the file wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php.
7. Open the renamed wp-config.php file in your favorite text editor. Here’s a screenshot of how the wp-config.php is set up. 
8. Fill in the following information
DB_NAME
The name of the database you created for WordPress. (ex. WordPress)
DB_USER
The username you created for WordPress (ex. admin)
DB_PASSWORD
The password you chose for the WordPress username.
DB_HOST
The hostname you determined (usually localhost)
9. Save the file.
10. Run the install scrip by copying and pasting this URL into your browser http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php
Step 3
Hooray! Hopefully all went according to plan.
Treat yourself to a nice cold beer.
Category: Good Blogging Practice, Tips
Great stuff finally i have my wordpress installed locally way to go Rebecca thanks so much!
ok everything is very beautifull here, with you everybody, nicely put, but what about this erorr that’s verry frustrating:
403 Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /wordpress/wp-admin/install.php on this server.
I can’t believe, not a single one of you, encountered this erorr????!!!!!!!!
I had this error. ‘localhost’ doesn’t work for me, but I replaced it with 127.0.0.1 (followed by the rest of the URL as normal) and it worked okay
I run a local install of WordPress using MAMP (same concept, just using the Mac), and it’s very easy to set up. Also, not having to be dependent on an internet connection in order to develop is a lifesaver when the net connection is unstable.
I followed your guide and have wordpress running on wampserver, one problem is that it doesn’t send any emails.
It would be great if you could update/write a separate guide with instruction on how to get email working.
I’ve had an awful time trying to get XAMP lite running under XP Pro. In the end I gave up and have switched back to XP Home and haven’t had any troubles.
I wonder if the WAMP suffers the same problems?
I just ran the WAMP install on XP Pro and all went according to directions. Thanks for the concise, clear instructions.
thanks for the clear instructions.. now i can install the blog on WAMP server.
Regards
Steve
Thanks a million , finally a way to make WordPress work offline. Thanks a lot man , this really helped me out !!!
[...] For detailed and very nicely explained procedure for installation , click here . This guy has explained the process in the best way possible and it works . No pro thing involved [...]
Thanks for the great article.
It took me about ten minutes to set everything up and most of that was figuring out that I need to stop Skype to get the WAMP server to start correctly.
Thanks a ton for the huge timesaver.
This is a very helpfull thread.
Thanks.
This is the first time someone actually made it work your the boss. Peace and Thanks
Thanks for this information. It worked like a charm. I can now develop my custom WordPress themes. Your step-by-step procedures worked great.
[...] you can modify without breaking your blog. I am running one on my laptop using wampserver. See this page for more [...]
Thanx
i tried it first by opnening the install.php with my browser (as stated in the wordpress-install readme file), but that didn’t work because the url is not correct. I got an error and couldn’t figure it out, but having copied the right url from your site, it worked!
thanks you save my life…
[...] you can modify without breaking your blog. I am running one on my laptop using wampserver. See this page for more [...]
Very clear instructions. Thanks for writing these up. One question — will WAMP Server work on a Mac? Thanks,
Tom
i’ve got WAMP on XP Pro as a development environment, and i’m pretty happy with it. wordpress works great of course. i don’t actually know how i lived without it. the idea of debugging PHP on a remote server… bad times.
another excellent addition to this setup was adding IIS, strictly for the SMTP server. it’s necessary to change the port for the IIS webserver (8080 is a nice alt.) in order to avoid conflicts with WAMP, as they both reach for port 80. unfortunately i’m having problems getting _only_ wordpress’ emails to go through. other mail sent by the WAMP server goes through fine, as well as my email clients (outlook + thunderbird) i’m sure it only requires another 30 hours on googs and i’ll have it dialed, but either way the potential is there and i’d strongly recommend the pain of installing and configuring it.
re: Skype conflict – there’s a setting in skype to allow it to use port 80 for incoming connections. de-select that and you should have no conflicts w/ WAMP + Skype.
Great post!!! I have defiantly bookmarked your site!
Your the man!
I have never had any experience with servers/wordpress or anything close maybe except setting a static ip.
your instructions helped me alott! i have wordpress on wamp in my vista in no time and having a beer !
grateful, million thanks!
Rebecca would be the man, if she wasn’t a woman
Thanks for the compliments!
thanx dear…a great help
I cannot thank you enough, like Peter I tried to get WP up and running by opnening the install.php with my browser (as stated in the wordpress-install readme file and the Codex at WP.org), but that didn’t work. I too got the most horrendous erros and couldn’t figure it out not even after check the WP.org forums. Thank goodness I found you through Google – having copied the right url from your site I finally got WP working!
Installed WAMP and all seemed to go without any problem but when I click to start phpMyAdmin I get an acces den ied message
MySQL said:
MySQL said:
Any help would be much appreciated.
Setting up WordPress on a WampServer
Hi, here trying to install WampServer on my Windows XP Laptop and then setting up my wordpress blog on that server locally on my computer.
I already dragged the WordPress folder to the wampserver www directory. The first problem I find is when I have to open phpMyAdmin from the wamp menu on the Task Bar to begin creating a New Database. It doesn’t do that, It opens a page that says:
“Welcome to phpMyAdmin 2.11.6. Going down says: Error.My SQL said: #2003 – Can’t connect to MySQL server on ‘localhost’ (10061).”
Do anybody knows How to solve this and continue with the process ?
Best regards,
Julio
I was torn between using wampserver and XAMPP for my local wordpress instalation.
Lots of advice on both on the web.
In the end I settled for XAMPP on a machine running Vista.
Not had any problems… thus far.
You rock, thank you, I have tried this a bazillion times, and your way was finally successful…thank you thank you!
Hi, I am have alot of bother trying to get this working =(
Have tried xampp and wamp but i cant seem to get it working.
when i went to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php it just seemd to be like a dead link. Any help would be great.
Got it working
Thankyou.
[...] machine, and did not want to install IIS and configure it to run PHP. I found a great tutorial by Rebecca Markowitz that details setting up WordPress on a Wampserver. I followed the tutorial instructions to the [...]
[...] developer, so I thought it would be interesting and educational to work with PHP. I found a great tutorial for setting up WordPress on [...]
Hi there,
Newbie here. I just got a web host today, and would like to be able to actually work on the website offline (I’ll try setting my PC up according to the directions above to do so). But I’d like to know what I do when I have things updated. What files do I need to move to the host server so they go live? I figure the first time I move the entire WordPress folder over, but after that I wouldn’t think I would have to move the entire folder over, but perhaps only certain files? (I don’t intend on using the blog feature, I’m just doing more of a website). I just don’t like the idea of messing around with the files on the host server and having everything I do immediately go live! Any advice here would be great. Thanks.
Very helpful and detailed post on setting up a local host to run WordPress. Thank you. It makes setting up a local host almost as simple as setting up wordpress.
[...] artigo é baseado no original em inglês How to set up WordPress on a WampServer do blog WordPress [...]
Thank you soo much on this tutorial!!
OMG, I have been working at this for hours, and I followed all your directions and still, I’m getting a “404 Not Found” message when I paste http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php into my browser. Actually, my folder with the extracted wordpress stuff is named mysite, so I pasted http://localhost/mysite/wp-admin/install.php. Nothing. Help???????
Thanks a LOT!!!
Was banging my head against the wall all day before I found this page!
Merci BEAUCOUP!
Hello,
I’ve successfully set up WordPress on a Wamp Server.
But I’ve got some errors with the plugin : “Page Flip Image Gallery Version 0.5.7.8″
“imagecreatefromjpeg() – function not exists.”
“Error [002]: Write file error! Please setup permission to the books/ , images/ , sounds/ folders and include files to “777″”
“Warning: unlink(……/wp-content/pageflip/images/t_i_UHiylMJjwxT4.JPG) [function.unlink]: No such file or directory on line 1239 in file ……\wp-content\plugins\page-flip-image-gallery\pageFlip.class.php”
Please, explain to me, how I can fix it !!!
Thanks a lot
Thanks for including a beer in your tutorial!
This tutorial has been very helpful for a noob (me) Thank you so much, Rebecca!
almost blew my head trying to figure out how to install wordpress on a WAMP server. Thanks again 
How do I move a copy of wordpress that has multiple installs and also doesn’t keep 301ing to the live site?
Many- many thanks.
It finally works
i have followed your guide and as everyone else has comented it has been the only to work for me so far only when i trie to do the final step with my web browser this comes up Parse error: parse error in C:\wamp\www\wordpress\wp-config.php on line 22 do you know what could cause it any advise would be greatly appreciated thanks
thanks a lot for the post.
i did everything and like some others here got an error at the last step – that the address wasn’t found. my wordpress is installed in c://wamp/www, so i’ve changed the URL provided in the tutorial to http://localhost/wp-admin/install.php and WordPress Install page was opened. hope this will help
Andrew, what does line 22 of your wp-config file say?
it had my user on it but no worries now i sorted it great tutorial thanks
Thank you so much for your instructions. I needed to stand up WordPress on a WAMP server, and your instructions worked well for me.
Thanks, again!
and then how to setup multiple site using wordpress on wamp localhost server instead of existing one
Hello,
And thanks for help i have a problem when recover my password can anyone help me
”
The e-mail could not be sent.
Possible reason: your host may have disabled the mail() function…
“
Now that’s what all walkthroughs should be like – complete and thorough. Thank you v much!
Fantastic! Thank you SO MUCH for posting this!
Thanks. A great little guide on getting things moving. Very impressed with what little time this took. No more senseless FTPing!
Very very helping contents. I really admire the skill of the blogger. Indeed that was an awesome article about configuration of wordpress and the beauty of this article is, that the author has made it as easy as to take a glass of water.
Thanks, it helped me a lot.
So nicely described that even a starter can configure it completely.
I followed your instructions, and things look great when working on the local server using [http://localhost/wordpress] but I’ve connected my domainname to the server, but when I start goto [http://www.mydomain.com/wordpress I get some scrambled site without any template etc. …
As a new web and graphic designer, I found this guide very simple and straightforward to follow. My first two attempts were not successful but now I’ve got it and I will be moving on to work on my first blog for my client.
In a country where internet connection is such a headache, this is a very welcome solution.
Thank you very much.
Great step by step. No added confusing junk up in order to show how tech savvy the writer is. This is the way a step by step should be written ( for the user not the writer).
Very nice tutorial indeed. I was following a different one I had found and it overly complicated and I couldn’t get this to work. Now it is! Thanks!
Hey thanks that was awesome the screenshots really helped.
Just a tip for people who are used to regular online wordpress setup
When you change the config.php and put in user just put the user name and not
database_user
like u usually do in a regular wordpress setup.
great tutorial up and running in less than 10 mins on my local server, one question is how do i get my new wordpress site from my local server to my hosting server, what are the files i need to transfer. many thanks again for the tut so far.
thanks a lot – this helped!
cheers!
Hello Rebecca
Hope this message finds you well.
I’d like to seize this opportunity to thank you very much for the the great tutorial,
from your own long successful experience I’d like to take your recommendation in which of those server app you reckon me to use.
Wamp Server
XAMPP
AppServ 2.5.9
Thanks once agian
Kind Regards
Moe Kaddas
Bless you Rebecca!!!!
i have done all the steps but when i am trying to add new plugin this error message is displayed ”An Unexpected HTTP Error occurred during the API request.”
Does anyone know what happens? i am using Wamp server and 3.1 wordpress
didn’t work.
I’m trying to test run two sites on WAMP server. Could you pls suggest how to do it?
Jackie,
You can just create additional installations of WordPress within your WAMP and put them in separate folders. One folder could be called Site1 and the other could be called Site2.
Okay so im hosting my wp site from him using wamp however when someone registers for my site it doesnt send them and email how do i fix this?
Thank’s alot ….so useful
Nice stuff bro, it really worked for me.
Cheers… I’m gonna have that beer soon.
Thanks for the easy to follow tutorial!
Hi,,
I think I followed all of your directions, but when I copy and pasted the intall URL, it says 404 not found…what did I do wrong?
I was so looking forward to that beer! lol
Is there a folder called WordPress in your www directory?
Yes,,,the wordpress directory is there….any other ideas?
OK, I have installed WordPress per the instructions and apparently all went well as I am now looking at the admin panel ‘Dashboard’.
BUT, I cannot find a way to actually look at my ‘site’.
How do I get out of the admin thing and actually look at, and test out, my ‘site’ ??
cancel my last post. I worked it out. I typed in to my web browser localhost/wordpress/ and bingo, there was my page.
This is really great n very helpful.. Thank u very much from bottom of my HEART 2 every1..
Thanks a lot. So simple and effective.
Probably the most succinct of all the tutorials, howver problem,
Wamp is specifically set up to allow online/offline (ie Localhost) access.
Stand on my head i cannot get Online Access.
Have tried extending “wait time” from 5 sec to 60 secs => NBG
Have set up Netgear Modem to accept port 80=> NBG
At my wits end,
Any ideas?
[...] I installed WAMP using the following post on installing WAMP for WordPress (thanks WPGarage) and went through my most recent post ‘I got 45 problems but a Free [...]
Hello
Thank you for posting this guide.
However I have problems with step 2. when I try to open ‘phpMyadmin’ it says
Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /phpmyadmin/ on this server.
I use windows vista, and have chosen firefox for using wamp…
can someone please help me…
Without This Guide This Is Not Possible For Me.
Thanks You Very Much
Hey Rebecca Markowitz (that 2nd name: i like it). What more can I say your tutorial is awesome.. no single step missed and a brilliant ending. Thank you.
Error Summary
HTTP Error 404.0 – Not Found
The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
After installation I am facing this error! Please resolve this guys…..!
Rebecca!
U Rock Girl!
saved my life.
I was struglin!
I could not get it set set up right…Now it is all right!….nice and eazzzy instructions..
again you Rock!