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Setting up a local installation of WordPress
It is useful to have a local installation of WordPress. It is by no means mandatory, and you may well get on fine without one. But there are some great advantages to making sure it is only you that sees what you are doing. Even what seems like the slightest subtle change to your theme can upset your browser. At least if you make an embarrassing mistake on your computer it won’t be there for the world to see.
There are many ways of doing this, but the easiest way I have found is by using XAMPP. This piece of free software by Apache Friends allows you to install Apache, Perl, PHP and MySQL on your computer in one go and with minimal fuss.
Once you have installed XAMPP, and you have created a MySQL database for your WordPress installation, you need to download the entire WordPress package from wordpress.org, decompress it, and put the WordPress folder into the htdocs folder inside the xampp directory. Fire up XAMPP and you should be able to load up your own WordPress installation in your browser.
A more detailed guide for installing on Microsoft Windows XP can be found on tamba 2.
