For the last two weeks or so, i was busy cleaning up and adding some additional wordpress features to Techronnati blog. Testing every free available plugin is stealing much of my precious time knowing in fact that i am actually testing it in production server which should not be the case. You see, normally you get a new fresh set of Bandwidth space every month coming from the web hosting provider (***depends on your subscription plans). The more visitors you drive in to your website, the more bandwidth space is consumed and used. If you load too much activities on your production server i.e. like testing your site, loading images, you realize that you are actually eating too much bandwidth especially playing around the plugins, images, files, etc. so as experts would say, it’s advisable to do it just locally to free up the resources to be intended for your visitors.  I just realized it lately that i shouldn’t be doing this plugin testing right in my current blog’s server because i am eating server’s allocated bandwidth. But i think occasional testing is tolerable besides am using just a small fraction of the entire allocated bandwidth space so it’s ok but eventually i think i would settle down to have a local test server myself. While browsing the net i found out that you can actually have a local test server for wordpress blogs using WAMPSERVER. This tutorial would give you an insight on how to have a local test server on your windows machine, the same way i did on my Toshiba Laptop with Windows Vista Ultimate Edition.
 
ABOUT WAMPSERVER (WAMP stands for Windows Apache MySQL PHP)

Accdg to www.wampserver.com, WampServer is a Windows web development environment. It allows you to create web applications with Apache, PHP and the MySQL database. It also comes with PHPMyAdmin and SQLiteManager to easily manage your databases. For sure most Bloggers here are hosted via Apache, PHP, MySQL tandem especially those owning self-hosted blogs like myself- WP.

For those who doesn’t know it yet, Apache is a web server, which allows people with web browsers like Internet Explorer or Firefox to connect to a computer and see information there as web pages. MySQL is a database manager (that is, it keeps track of data in a highly organized way). PHP is a scripting language which can manipulate information held in a database and generate web pages afresh each time an element of content is requested from a browser. Other programs may also be included in a package, such as phpMyAdmin which provides a graphical interface for the MySQL database manager, or the alternative scripting languages Python or Perl. [wikipedia]
 
WampServer installs automatically (installer), and its usage is very intuitive. You will be able to tune your server without even touching the setting files. WampServer is the only packaged solution that will allow you to reproduce your production server. Once WampServer is installed, you have the possibility to add as many Apache, MySQL and PHP releases as you want.[wampserver.com]

 
After installing the WAMP Server, beside the clock display on your windows PC you would see an icon. And if you point your mouse to the icon, a pop up windows appears listing the server features and its settings something like this.

How to install WAMP Server:

Just simply double click on the file you downloaded and just follow the instructions in every pages you see in that installation. Everything seemed to be automatic. The WampServer package I got here has the latest releases of Apache, MySQL and PHP. You can download it [here].

Once you have installed WampServer on your windows machine (i used this in Windows Vista Ultimate edition.) The WAMPServer package consists the following releases:
 - Apache 2.2.8
 - MySQL 5.0.51b
 - PHP 5.2.6

Features and Functionalities

When you left click on WampServer’s icon, you will be able to:
- manage your Apache and MySQL services
- switch online/offline (give access to everyone or only localhost)
- install and switch Apache, MySQL and PHP releases
- manage your servers settings
- access your logs
- access your settings files
- create alias

When you right click the icon : this commands show
- change WampServer’s menu language
- access this page

How to start with WAMPSERVER
When you install WampServer, a “www” directory is created (generally c:\wamp\www). Create a directory inside for your project and put your PHP files in it.
Click on the link “Localhost” in the WampServer menu or open your browser and open the http://localhost address. By doing so, you should see this image below - The WAMPServer Page. This means that you are now able to set your localhost or 127.0.0.1 successfully. ****

**** Just be sure that you don’t conflict WAMPServer with IIS or Internet Information Services you have on your machine because you might experience  some conflicts with the port number. Apache actually listens to port 80 by default and you have to make sure that this is free for use by Apache. If you have IIS installed, port 80 will be locked hence you would get an error page or this page below would not show, in that case open ‘\apache\conf\httpd.conf’ and find this line: Listen 80. Change that number to another, this should work properly or maybe disable the IIS you have on your machine. Restart your browser and type in again http://localhost to check if it works.

Adding other Apache, MySQL and PHP releases

Did you know that WampServer allows you to install almost all the existing releases of Apache, PHP and MySQL? Yes, this is possible so you can reproduce exactly the settings of your production server. To add a new release, download it here and install it. When activating a release, you just need to click on the icon menu and activate the release that you want to use. See this image.

Wait until the WampServer icon become white again and start to work.

After installing WAMPServer and running it, this is the time you install Wordpress for blogging.

INSTALLING WORDPRESS WITH WAMPSERVER

1. Go to  Downloads page of Wordpress Website to get the latest WordPress installation package. After downloading, unzip the package, rename the folder to “wordpress”. Copy or move the whole folder inside the C:/wamp/www directory. You begin to install and setup blogs by typing in this URL address below in the browser (by the way, am using firefox in this image below). You need to setup file wp-config.php either manually or through web interface. However, we suggest to do it manually.

http://localhost/wordpress

2: To do it manually, open the wordpress directory which you saved in c:/wamp/www folder and look for the the file wp-config-sample.php. This file contains the following defined variables as seen below.

3: Right click on the file “wp-config-sample.php” and rename it to “wp-config.php”

4.Then, use your desire text editor to open file “wp-config.php”

5. Replace the default MySQL Settings in your WordPress wp-config.php file. Follow the sample parameters below.

Database : wordpress
Username : wordpress
Password : wordpress
Host : localhost

6: After saving the file, go back to your browser and click to refresh/reload the page. Or you can directly go this URL: http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

7. Refreshing the browser will open the installation page. If in case you were not directed to this page after typing in http://localhost/wordpress, double check the wp-config.php file you have saved if it has the same database information we have on our sample. Verify Step #5.  In the installation page, you can fill in your email address as well as the title for your WordPress which we suggest to use your domain name.  Enable this feature: “Allow my blog to appear in search engine like Google and Technorati”

8. Click the button “Install WordPress” to start installing wordpress on your machine. This will wait a little while. At the end you should get the confirmation page telling you that  WordPress installation was a “Success”. Then you also get the user “admin” with the temporary random password which you should immediately change after login your WordPress. **Please take note of the username and password here.

9. After clicking on the login link, you will be directed to a Login page of WordPress. Use the username and password which WordPress generated for you in step#8.

10. Your browser i.e. firefox might have a popup window asking you if you want to remember the username and password and you should select No because you opt to change it in a minute.

11. After logged in successfully, you should be in the main WordPress Dashboard for administrator.

12. Look for the Users tab as seen on the image below. This illustration is taken from WP ver 2.5 which may be different from lower versions of Wordpress. Once clicked , you will be directed to Users Tab Options where you click on “Your Profile” which you can change the temporary random password to your desire one .

Image 1

Image 2

13. After clicking on the button “Update Profile”, you should get the confirmed message “Profile updated”.

14. When you click on the link “Visit Site” next to your domain name on the top left corner, you should go to the front page of your WordPress.

Congratulations! You’ve just finished installing and setting up WordPress on your WAMPServer. You can now start simulating and testing WP plugins, pictures in your blogs.

But if you still wish to have a test server not situated in your local machine, i have this free webhosting solution for you. Check this out. It’s worth a try. =)

For more information on reviews, tips, and discussion, Feel free to browse the following Techronnati Forums:

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