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Wordpress is free and very easy to install. In fact, the entire Wordpress installation process takes less than 5 minutes! The minimum requirements for installing Wordpress are a Web Server with your Web Host or on your machine, a text editor, FTP software and a Web Browser.

You can install Wordpress remotely or locally. If you are planning to launch a blog publicly, then you need to install Wordpress on your Web Host’s server. This is called Wordpress Remote Installation. If you need to learn Wordpress, test Wordpress, or use blog for private purposes, then you can install Wordpress locally on your machine. This is called Wordpress Local Installation. But before installing on your machine, you need to have or install a Web Server running PHP and MySQL on your machine. XAMPP is a free web server that you can download and easily install on your machine.

In this tutorial, you will install Wordpress locally on your machine for getting a test drive and feel about using Wordpress for creating and managing your blog. When you finally feel comfortable and get around with various Wordpress Features, you can install Wordpress on your Web Host. The steps for remote installation are similar to that of local installation just that might need FTP client software to upload the Wordpress directory to the web server on web host.

So, now let’s get started with installing Wordpress locally on your machine:

1. Install XAMPP: XAMPP's name is short form for X (meaning cross-platform), Apache HTTP Server, MySQL, PHP and Perl. You need to install XAMPP on your machine in order to provide the database backend, local server and running environment for your Wordpress local website.
   Download XAMPP for the link for your operating system from http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html .
   Then, run the downloaded XAMPP setup and check the install Apache and MySQL as service checkboxes.
   Once the setup is complete, you should be able to view the XAMPP screen by visiting http://localhost in your web browser.

1. Download the Wordpress Setup: Download the latest version of Wordpress from http://wordpress.org/ . Create a ‘wordpress’ directory inside the htdocs folder in your XAMPP installation folder. Extract the files from Wordpress zip to the ‘wordpress’ Directory.
2. Install Wordpress (famous 5 – minute installation):
   1. Create a database for WordPress e.g. ‘localblog’ on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it using PHPMyadmin or some other MySQL client tool.
       
      
   2. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.
   3. Open wp-config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details such as database name, user name, password and database host to generate and use your secret key password. /** The name of the database for WordPress */
      define('DB_NAME', 'localblog');
      /** MySQL database username */
      define('DB_USER', 'root');
      /** MySQL database password */
      define('DB_PASSWORD', '');
      /** MySQL hostname */
      define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
   4. Copy the extracted WordPress directory in the htdocs folder of your XAMPP installation. E.g. C:xampphtdocs
   5. Rename the ‘wordpress’ directory to ‘localblog’
   6. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing http://localhost/localblog/wp-admin/install.php  in your favorite web browser.
   7. Fill in your blog name and your email id. Please provide the right email id, which will be useful to retrieve your admin password. Also, uncheck the ‘Allow my blog to appear in search engines’ checkbox since you are just using this as local installation. For actual remote installation, do not uncheck this box. Let it remain checked so that search engines can find your blog.
   1. Success! You will be presented with a successful confirmation that your blog has been created. Also, very very important step is to note down the wordpress admin password. This password you will be using to login into wordpress admin section. Without this password, you won’t be able to write articles and manage your blog.





Click on Install WordPress button





Note this password carefully and then click on the Log In button to log into wordpress administration section with this password and ‘admin’ as username. From now on, you will be able to access your admin section from the URL http://localhost/localblog/wp-login.php .

That's it! WordPress should now be installed. Now you will be able to view your local website. Congratulations, you have successfully installed Wordpress on your local machine with http://localhost/localblog as your local web address!

Wordpress Tutorial Part 1: Introduction to Wordpress Blogging

Wordpress Tutorial Part 3: Wordpress Basics - Features Tour

Wordpress Tutorial Part 4: Wordpress Basics - Features Tour continued

Wordpress Tutorial Part 5: Writing a Wordpress Post

Wordpress Tutorial Part 6: Editing a Wordpress Post