A local WordPress install provides a fully functional testing bed for themes, plugins and hacks – with the convenience and safety of your own personal computer. But given that WordPress is a PHP application that traditionally runs under Apache-powered servers, you will need to simulate this server environment on your own desktop.

And how do you do this and the rest of the things necessary to start experimenting to your hearts galore? Try UrbanGiraffe’s tutorial on installing WordPress on your Windows computer. The tutorial itself is almost 7 months old, so there are bound to be some minor changes in the steps you will have to take.

On Page 3 of the guide, you are asked to enable the Apache rewrite module – which allows you to enable “nice urls” or custom permalinks in WordPress. Although you are asked to uncomment two lines of code, i.e. “#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so” and “#AddModule mod_rewrite.c”, only the former is required for the latest WAMP.

On Page 4 of the guide, you are asked to update phpMyAdmin to use your new root password. Although the config.inc.php file is stated to be in “\www\phpmyadmin\config.inc.php”, it’s now in “\phpmyadmin\”.

And, that’s it. Other than these two changes, the guide is perfect. In fact, you could use this guide to help you install any other PHP blog software on your Windows PC. Of course, you would need to take one or two different steps, such as uploading the files for Movable Type (or any other blog software) instead of the files for WordPress.

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