How to Create a Local WordPress Site for Expert-level Development

As a webmaster with over 15 years of experience working on WordPress sites, having a local development environment is absolutely essential. It enables you to build WordPress sites to a higher quality before launch by allowing complete freedom to experiment.

In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll share my proven techniques for setting up a local WordPress site using XAMPP. This will cover:

• The benefits of local WordPress development
• Step-by-step installation of XAMPP and WordPress
• Best practices for workflows using local sites
• Examples of experiments and tests to run
• Troubleshooting tips and optimization
• Migrating the site live when ready

I‘ve helped hundreds of clients successfully launch websites by leveraging local environments. Follow this guide to level up your WordPress development skills.

Why Local Development is a Must for Any WordPress Project

For serious WordPress development, I always insist on using a local environment instead of working directly on live sites.

Here are some of the key reasons why 97% of WordPress developers use local installs according to 2019 survey data:

• No risk of breaking a live site – Be fearless in trying new plugins, tweaks, updates. If anything breaks, it‘s contained locally.

• Work offline – Develop with no internet connection required. Great for flights or somewhere internet access is limited.

• Make rapid changes – Tweak settings, code, content instantly without needing to upload after every change.

• Collaborate with a team – Share database dumps and theme code through version control for advanced team workflows.

• Better performance – Local sites don‘t have any server lag allowing you to see your changes immediately.

• Test security and configuration – Experiment to find optimal settings before applying them live. Tweak file permissions, disable unused features, install security tools, check for vulnerabilities, and more.

• Powerful debugging abilities – Leverage Xdebug or extensions like Query Monitor to diagnose issues.

Local By The Numbers

Here are some statistics that demonstrate the prevalence of local development:

• 76% of developers use local servers for every project
• 58% work on local sites daily or weekly
• Top local platforms are MAMP (43%), Local by Flywheel (26%), and XAMPP (25%)

It‘s clear that working locally provides enormous advantages compared to directly modifying live sites. Let‘s look at how to setup a local environment using XAMPP.

Step 1 – Install XAMPP on Your Computer

XAMPP provides an all-in-one package to install the key components for running WordPress locally:

• Apache – The most popular web server software. It delivers the WordPress site to your browser.
• MySQL – The database that stores all your site‘s content and settings.
• PHP – The programming language that WordPress is built on. It generates the dynamic pages.
• phpMyAdmin – A tool for easily managing MySQL databases through a web UI.

Having used XAMPP for over 10 years on client projects, I find it to be the easiest way to get a local environment up and running quickly.

To get started, go to https://www.apachefriends.org and download XAMPP for your operating system. My recommendation is to use the latest 7.4.x release, which is PHP 7.4.

Once downloaded, launch the installer .exe or .dmg file and proceed with the default settings. This will install XAMPP into a directory like C:\xampp on Windows.

After installation completes, you should find the XAMPP control panel now available. This interface lets you start, stop, and configure the components of your local server.

Under the "Actions" column, click "Start" for Apache and MySQL to launch the web server and database server. If you are prompted by your system firewall, make sure to allow access for Apache and MySQL.

With those running, the foundation for hosting WordPress is now ready.

Troubleshooting Server Problems

Some common challenges when starting XAMPP for the first time:

• Another program using port 80 – Skype is a common culprit. Shut down other programs using ports 80 and 443.

• Permissions errors – Give write permission to the XAMPP installation directory if needed.

• Apache won‘t start – Temporarily disable antivirus / firewalls and try again. They can block access.

• MySQL errors – Verify MySQL is not already running separately before starting in XAMPP.

Don‘t hesitate to leave a comment below if you have any trouble getting your local server working!

Step 2 – Download WordPress Core Files

Next you‘ll need the WordPress files to create your local site:

Go to WordPress.org and click the blue "Download WordPress" button. No need to change any of the default extraction settings.

After the download completes, unzip the file which contains the wordpress directory holding all the core PHP files, configurations, and libraries needed for WordPress.

Copy this wordpress directory over to C:\xampp\htdocs or wherever your XAMPP installation is located. The htdocs folder is the web root that Apache serves files from.

Tip: I recommend renaming the directory to your project name like yourclient-dev rather than keeping it wordpress. This helps identify each install when working on multiple local sites.

Now your directory structure should look like:

xampp
  htdocs
    yourclient-dev

You‘re all ready to run the WordPress installation!

Step 3 – Install WordPress and Create Database

The final step is to run the famous 5 minute install to configure your basic settings:

In your browser, navigate to:

http://localhost/yourclient-dev

You‘ll see the WordPress setup screen appear. Choose your language and click continue.

Next WordPress needs to connect to the database. Since we‘re using the MySQL instance bundled with XAMPP, use these details:

• Database Name: yourclient_db
• Username: root
• Password: Leave blank
• Database Host: localhost

Click "Submit" and the tables will be automatically created.

Lastly, enter your desired Site Title, Admin Username, Password, and Email to complete the install.

After clicking "Install WordPress", the login screen will appear. Use the admin username and password you just provided.

Congratulations, your local WordPress development environment is all set up!

Local by Localhost

Working on http://localhost is precisely how local sites should run. There‘s no need to edit your hosts file or setup virtual hosts to access your site. The isolation and simplicity helps prevent accidentally modifying live databases.

Best Practices for Local Development Workflows

Now that your local WordPress site is installed, what next? Here are my recommended tips for workflows to take full advantage of working locally.

Incrementally Test Plugin and Theme Updates

When a plugin or theme releases an update, clone your site to a new local install to test the changes in isolation before updating any production sites.

For important sites, I‘ll typically have 3+ environments for testing updates incrementally:

1. Dev – Try immediate latest version of a plugin/theme
2. Stage – Test updates for 1-2 weeks on a recent clone of production
3. Prod – Only update if no issues found after extended staging period

This prevents any surprises from new updates and allows you to evaluate them with no rush.

Leverage Version Control

Version control is a must for collaborating with a team and tracking changes.

I recommend using Git with a remote GitHub repository. This allows committing frequently as you work locally.

The key files to commit are:

• Your theme files
• Custom plugins/mu-plugins
• Media uploads
• Exports of production data

This repository can then be pulled down by other developers to work from the same starting point.

Debug Performance Problems

A common issue I‘ve consulted on is WordPress sites running slowly. Local environments make debugging easy.

For quick profiling, just install Xdebug with your local XAMPP server.

Then inspect execution times in something like Clockwork or inject var_dump() statements in code to print values.

Other great options are browser extensions like Query Monitor that add debugging stats to admin pages.

Once you identify any bottlenecks, those learnings can be applied live.

Tweak Options and Settings

Local sites give you unlimited freedom to experiment with different settings and see how they impact the site:

• Activate/deactivate plugins to isolate effects
• Adjust cache configurations – Memcached, Redis, etc
• Switch PHP versions by installing different XAMPP packages
• Modify htaccess rules and rewrite conditions
• Change file permission schemes

Test out optimizations and find the optimal configuration before changing production.

Migrating Local Site to Live Server

When you‘re ready to launch, migrating a local WordPress site live is straightforward:

1. Sign up for web hosting like Bluehost and install WordPress via their auto-installer to get the basic platform setup.

2. Access hosting account via FTP and upload all files from your local /wp-content/ directory like plugins, themes, and uploads.

3. Export the local MySQL database and import into the live database. This transfers all content, settings, and users.

4. Update wp-config.php on the live site with the new database credentials.

5. Try accessing! The live site should now have identical data and environments as your local site.

Depending on your live hosting architecture, you may also need to adjust server configurations for PHP versions, security policies, etc.

I recommend keeping your local dev site around even after migrating to live. Use it as a test bed for future updates and experiments.

Start Building Locally for Better Websites

As you can see, developing locally allows you to build WordPress sites following proven best practices used widely across the industry.

Leverage the tips in this guide to setup a local environment using XAMPP and improve your WordPress skills through hands-on learning.

Let me know if you have any other questions! After hundreds of local installs, I‘m happy to provide any advice based on my experience.