Installing WordPress on Windows

  1. Download XAMPP Download
  2. Download WordPress Download
  3. Install Microsoft Visual C++
  4. Right click the downloaded XAMPP file > Extract All...
  5. Right click the downloaded Wordpress .zip file > Extract All...
  6. Make a copy of wordpress/wp-config-sample.php and name it wp-config.php
  7. Cut the wordpress folder inside the XAMPP/htdocs directory
  8. Copy the extracted XAMPP directory to a safe location to run from, C:\Program Files for example
  9. Run XAMPP/setup_xampp.bat to update the configuration files with the new server location
  10. Run XAMPP/xampp-control.exe
  11. Click the Start button next to Apache and MySQL
  12. Navigate to XAMPP/mysql/bin
  13. Hold the SHIFT key and right click in the white space > Open PowerShell windows here...
  14. Type the following in the PowerShell window to setup the WordPress database
    ./mysql -u root
    CREATE DATABASE wordpress DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
    GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO 'wordpress_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'W0rdPr3ss!!';
    FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
    EXIT;
  15. Open a web browser and navigate to https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/
  16. Copy the response for use shortly
  17. Navigate to XAMPP/htdocs/wordpress and edit wp-config.php with a text editor
  18. Press CTRL+F and search for 'DB_NAME'
  19. Update the database name, username and password
  20. Press CTRL+F and search for 'AUTH_KEY'
  21. Paste the secure secret keys generated earlier, overwriting the template
  22. Save the changes to wp-config.php
  23. Open a web browser and navigate to http://DNSorIP/wordpress