As an experienced WordPress developer managing client sites for over 15 years, I highly recommend installing WordPress locally on your Windows PC.
There are several compelling reasons why:
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The Benefits of a Local WordPress Environment
Test New Features Safely
A local WordPress site allows you to experiment with new themes, plugins, and WordPress updates without affecting your live site. No need to worry about breaking changes when testing locally first.
According to WP Engine, 42% of developers use a local server to evaluate compatibility before updating WordPress or extensions on production sites.
Develop Locally, Launch Globally
Build and stage your entire site on your local machine. Once it‘s ready, you can push it live with minimal effort. This helps avoid launching half-baked sites filled with "lorem ipsum".
Show Off Your Masterpiece
Give clients sneak peeks of in-progress sites to solicit feedback. A local WordPress installation lets you share development previews before going live.
Learn Without Risk
New to WordPress? A local site is the perfect risk-free sandbox for both testing themes and honing your Dev skills. Experiment freely knowing mistakes won‘t impact real visitors.
Move Sites Between Hosts
Migrating a live site to a new host? You can move the database locally first for testing before switching providers.
Clearly, a local WordPress environment provides immense benefits for development and learning. Let‘s look at how to set it up properly on Windows.
Method 1: Using LocalWP (Formerly Local by Flywheel)
LocalWP is the easiest way to install WordPress on Windows locally in my opinion. Here‘s how it works:
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Download and install the LocalWP app from https://localwp.com
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Launch LocalWP and click the "+" button to create a new site
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Enter a name and select your preferred environment. The default works fine.
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Add WordPress admin credentials like username and password.
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Click the "WP Admin" button to launch your site!
The process takes just a few minutes, even if you‘ve never used LocalWP before.
Compared to other local WordPress options, LocalWP makes it incredibly fast to start developing sites. Just enter a site name, and WordPress is installed and configured automatically in the background.
The advantages of using LocalWP include:
- One-click WordPress installation – No messing with databases and config files.
- Manages all sites in one dashboard – Easily start, stop, or delete sites.
- Live site integration – Push to production when you‘re ready to launch.
- Automatic HTTPS – Enhanced security with free SSL certificates.
LocalWP handles all the complicated server configuration for you. As a developer, it‘s my favorite tool for spinning up quick local WordPress instances to test new ideas or client sites.
Give it a try by downloading from their site.
Method 2: Installing WAMP Server
If you need more control over your local environment, using WAMP is another good option for running WordPress on Windows.
WAMP stands for "Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP"—all the components you need to run WordPress locally.
Here are the steps to install WordPress using WAMP:
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Download the WAMP installer from https://www.wampserver.com
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Run through the installation wizard
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Confirm your settings for Apache, PHP, and MySQL
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Open phpMyAdmin and create a new database
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Get the WordPress files, typically from wordpress.org
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Extract WordPress and copy the folder into the
wwwdirectory of WAMP -
Access
http://localhost/wordpressto launch the installer -
Enter your database credentials to store WordPress data
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Complete the famous 5-minute install process
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Log in to your new local WordPress site!
The WAMP stack gives you much more visibility into the underlying components like Apache and MySQL. This allows finer-grained control and customization.
However, the downside is you have to do more manual configuration upfront compared to a tool like LocalWP. But the flexibility can be useful, especially for developers.
Key advantages of using WAMP include:
- Complete control over stack configuration – Customize Apache, PHP, MySQL as needed.
- Change php.ini settings – Increase file upload size limits or memory limits.
- More insightful debugging – Errors expose lower level stack traces.
- Learn server environments – Useful for grasping how PHP/MySQL/Apache interact.
Overall, WAMP is great if you want to really understand the technology behind WordPress. For those seeking a simpler setup, LocalWP is usually easier.
Migrating from Local to Live WordPress
Once you finish developing your site locally, you‘ll probably want to launch it publicly at some point.
Here are a few best practices to migrate safely from a local WordPress site to live hosting:
- Use a dedicated migration plugin like All-in-One WP Migration. This smoothly transfers your files and database to the new host.
- Update any hardcoded local URLs and paths in the database to new live domain. Search/replace the old for new.
- If the live host supports HTTPS, install a free SSL certificate from Let‘s Encrypt. Security matters.
- Clone your site to a staging environment first if possible. Verify everything works before going truly live.
- Enable maintenance mode before migrating. You don‘t want visitors seeing a half-moved site.
- Update your XML sitemaps with the new domain so search engines re-index properly.
Follow these tips and you can seamlessly move your local WP dev site to any major hosting provider like Bluehost or WP Engine.
Optimizing Performance of Local WordPress
Depending on your computer specs, a local WordPress site may load slower than live hosting with more resources.
Here are some optimizations to improve performance:
- Use a caching plugin like WP Rocket to generate static HTML pages. This avoids heavy PHP/database loads.
- Enable GZIP compression in your local web server config to reduce transferred assets size.
- Increase MySQL and PHP memory limits if you have large media libraries or plugins.
- Clean up the database periodically with a tool like wp-optimize to remove bloat.
- Disable unused plugins to lower memory usage and reduce boot time.
- Use SQLite for smaller databases as an alternative to MySQL.
With these tweaks, you can reduce load times and have a more production-like experience even on underpowered local machines.
Helpful Resources for Learning WordPress Locally
For readers who are just starting out with WordPress, here are some of my top recommended resources:
- All-Inclusive Guide to Learning WordPress – Start from zero WordPress knowledge
- WordPress Video Tutorials on WPBeginner – Learn through hands-on video lessons
- WP 101: WordPress for Beginners – Free course by WordPress experts
- Learn WordPress Theme Development – Create your own themes locally
- LocalWP Learning Resources – Videos and docs specific to LocalWP
With quality resources and a local WordPress site to experiment on, anyone can start building WordPress skills today. Let me know if you have any other questions!
Hope this guide helps you successfully install WordPress on your Windows machine. Happy local WordPressing!
