In recent times, Wordpress has gained lot of popularity as a content management system and it's no longer just a blogging tool. Lot of CS/IT engineers would want to try their hands at the software and develop plugins/themes for WordPress. Following guide acts as a quick reference to install Wordpress on your own computer without needing a server, hosting plan and domain, etc.

Installing Required Software:

1. XAMPP: You will need this free software to run PHP & MySQL on your computer. Head over to #-Link-Snipped-# and download the XAMPP software. Install the software using the instructions displayed by the software installer. Once installed, run the software control panel and hit following buttons -

Apache - Start | Mysql - Start

Also, hitting the 'Explore...' button will open the folder in which XAMPP is installed. You will find a number of other folders inside and folder named 'htdocs' is the folder of our interest.

2. Download WordPress (Free): Head over to Download – WordPress.org and download the latest .zip. Once you download the software, extract the contents of the zip. You will get a folder named 'wordpress'. Rename this folder to something like 'blog'.

Nove, cut/copy and paste the 'blog' folder we just named, into the 'htdocs' folder. That means the folder hierarchy will look like: D:\xampp\htdocs\blog\ (the drive letter may be different in your case).

You are now done with the basic setup. Let's go ahead. I hope you are still with me 😀

Setup Database For The Blog

Now, open your favorite browser (which should be Firefox or Chrome) and type #-Link-Snipped-#.

If everything up to this step was right, you will see the phpMyAdmin console. Notice the "Create New Database" field and enter database name, something like "blogdb" or simply "blog". Hit 'create' button to create the database. All done!

Start WordPress Installation

Now, in your browser, open another tab, and type #-Link-Snipped-# . Your browser will automatically take you to the WordPress installation page and offer a user friendly installer. Simply follow the instructions. On the database setup page during the installation, you might have to use "root" as database administration and a blank password to continue. Other options would work fine on their own. So don't touch them if you don't know what they do.

That's all! Your Wordpress installation is ready to roll. Access your wordpress front end from #-Link-Snipped-# and wordpress backend (admin panel) via #-Link-Snipped-#

If you have any questions or stuck up at any level, post your problems below.