WordPress is a well known opensource content management system. Although, initially it was started as a blog development tool, but with the time it has grown into a fully fledged content management system. WordPress development has simplified the website development process and provides a dynamic and extensible database-driven website. If you want to improve the conversion rate and sales rate of your site, you need to avoid working on the initial development of your site while it is hosted on a live server.It is quite simple to set up a local server on your PC or Mac. You can do this by using Wamp or Mamp. Discussed below are the steps involved in installing and testing WordPress on each platform. This will help you to develop and launch your own online store.
1. Installing the local server:
In order to install the local server, the windows users will need to download the server software from wampserver.com/en/download.php. Choose whatever is appropriate for you; 32 bit or 64 bit version. If you are a Mac user then you should go to mamp.info. While Wamp will get installed on the PC at c:wamp, Mamp gets installed in the Mac’s Applications folder. When it comes to the set up process, it is a little less involved in case of Mac. However, PC users will have to specify their default browser as part of the process. If your default browser is Internet Explorer, then you just need to click Open as your Windows folder will already be selected. If it does not get selected, go to the relevant folder and select the browser you want to use.
When firewall asks you the experience of using Apache HTTP server to communicate on your home and work, leave the checkbox ticked and click ‘allow access’ to proceed. Now you will be asked to provide details of your SMTP sever and email address. Click next if you do not know the server address.
2. Installing WordPress
You first need to create MySQL database in which you can store your blog content. Open the MySQL configuration utility by clicking on phpMyAdmin on the status page. In case a pop-up asks for authorization, use root for both username and password. Click in the box below Create new database and choose a database name. Now just click create to complete the process.
3. Now install the core WordPress files.
Go to wordpress.org and download the latest build from the link. Unzip the files and store them in Wamp or Mamp web files folder. In case of Mac, unzip the WordPress files to ~ApplicationsMAMPhtdocs.
4. Enter required details
Go back to your browser and reload https://localhost/ to start setting up wordpress. There will be a warning that no configuration file in place. Click ‘create a configuration file button’ and them ‘let’s go’. Enter the following details
Database name: [whatever you specified in step 3]
User name: root
Password: [leave blank for PC; root for Mac]
Database Host: localhost
Table Prefix: wp_
5. Setting of wordpress files
Now click through the next two screens and start setting up the WordPress file. You can enter any title, username and password for the site as you like. It is better to use the same you will use on the live site. Provide an email address on which you can get your log in details. Your username is now confirmed. Now Log in to open the WordPress dashboard.
6. Installation done
You are done with the installation now. You can start with adding content to your blog. To preview your site, go to https://localhost/ on the PC and https://localhost:8888/ on a Mac.
7. Export the Content
Now it is time to export the content. It is a two stage process. First, export your posts by clicking Tools | Export in the sidebar. You can export all of the content or just the posts and pages. Download the export file and save the XML file. Log in to your WordPress installation and pick Tools | Import and click WordPress for the import type.
8. Login
You can copy the locally-designed themes by going to your local server templates folder. Copy the complete theme folder and contents to the same wp-contentthemes folder on your server. Finally, log in to your remote installation of WordPress and pick Appearance.
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