How To Install WordPress On Windows 10

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WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) in the world, powering over 30% of websites. If you want to set up a WordPress environment for development or testing purposes on your Windows 10 machine, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through the steps of installing WordPress on Windows 10 using a local server environment called XAMPP.

Step 1: Install XAMPP

XAMPP is a free, open-source software package that includes Apache, MariaDB (a drop-in replacement for MySQL), PHP, and Perl. It allows you to create a local server environment on your machine to run PHP applications, like WordPress.

  1. Head over to the XAMPP download page, and download the latest version of XAMPP for Windows.
  2. Run the installer and follow the on-screen instructions. You can choose to install all the components or just Apache, MariaDB, PHP, and phpMyAdmin, which are required for running WordPress.
  3. Once the installation is complete, launch the XAMPP Control Panel by searching for it in the Windows start menu or by running xampp-control.exe from the XAMPP installation folder.
  4. Start the Apache and MySQL services by clicking the “Start” button next to each of them.

Step 2: Create a Database for WordPress

Next, you need to create a MySQL database for your WordPress installation:

  1. Open your web browser and go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin.
  2. Click on the “Databases” tab.
  3. Enter a name for your database (e.g., “wordpress”) and click the “Create” button.

Step 3: Install WordPress

Now it’s time to install WordPress:

  1. Download the latest WordPress package from the official website.
  2. Extract the contents of the downloaded ZIP file.
  3. Copy the extracted “wordpress” folder to the XAMPP installation’s “htdocs” folder (e.g., C:\xampp\htdocs).
  4. Rename the copied “wordpress” folder to something more descriptive, like “mywebsite”. This will be the URL path to access your local WordPress site (e.g., http://localhost/mywebsite).
  5. In the new folder (e.g., C:\xampp\htdocs\mywebsite), locate the wp-config-sample.php file and rename it to wp-config.php.
  6. Open the wp-config.php file in a text editor and update the following values:
  • DB_NAME: the name of the database you created in step 2 (e.g., ‘wordpress’).
  • DB_USER: ‘root’ (the default user for XAMPP’s MySQL).
  • DB_PASSWORD: ” (leave it empty, as there’s no password for the ‘root’ user by default).
  • Save and close the wp-config.php file.
  • Open your web browser and go to http://localhost/mywebsite (replace “mywebsite” with the folder name you chose in step 3.4).
  • Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the WordPress installation, and you’re done!

    • Conclusion

    You’ve successfully installed WordPress on your Windows 10 machine using XAMPP. Now you can start building your website, testing plugins and themes, and improving your web development skills in a local environment.