If you are developing a theme or plugin for WordPress, you should definitely install WordPress on your machine because it will save you time, hassle, bandwidth, and much more. It’s also good for when you are just starting a new blog or a new project because you’ll be able to preview it and fix any mistakes before it goes online. In this post, I’ve only written a tutorial on how to install WordPress locally on Windows. So, I apologize Mac users, I don’t have a tutorial for you. However, installing WordPress locally on a Mac is very similar to what I’ve written below if you use MAMP.

Installing WordPress Locally on Windows

Installing XAMPP Lite:

1. Download and install XAMPP Lite (I downloaded the EXE (7-zip) version and extracted it to the root of my C drive);
2. Go to the xampplite folder and open setup_xampp.bat (Press any key to continue when it tells you to);
3. Open xampp-control.exe and start Apache and MySql (It’s inside the xampplite folder as well and all you need to do to start these services is press the corresponding ‘Start’ buttons);

Creating a New Database:

1. Open up a Web browser and go to http://localhost/xampp/splash.php (Apache and MySql need to be running. By the way, I used Mozilla Firefox);
2. Click on the language that you want (I assume that English is good since you are reading this);
3. On the left side, under Tools, click on phpMyAdmin (A new page will open);
4. Find where it says Create new database and type in a name for your database in the box (I typed in wordpress);
5. Select utf8_unicode_ci from the drop down menu (It should be the last one);
6. Click on the ‘Create’ button (You’ve just created a database);

Installing WordPress:

1. Download and extract WordPress to a temporary folder (I extracted it to my desktop);
2. In the extracted folder, rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php;
3. Open wp-config.php in a text editor (I used notepad);
4. Change
   define('DB_NAME', 'putyourdbnamehere'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'usernamehere'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'yourpasswordhere'); // ...and password
   to
   define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'root'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', ''); // ...and password
   and save
   (If you typed in another name in step 4 of ‘Creating a New Database’, type in that name instead of wordpress)
5. Go to the xampplite folder and open the htdocs folder;
6. Cut and paste the WordPress folder to the htdocs folder;
7. Open up a Web browser and go to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php;
8. WordPress should now be installed. You’ve just installed WordPress locally! (Woot!)