How To Install and Set Up a WordPress Blog Website using MAMP/XAMPP

Hi all, and happy new year!

This guide will cover all of the basics you need to set up a WordPress Blog on your website. You can actually set up a WordPress account for free at the official WordPress Website, or, for more control, you can download XAMPP for Windows or MAMP for Mac OS X and perform all of these same steps locally. This is especially useful for creating sandbox environments when developing new sites and applications. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll be using screenshots of Mac OS X 10.6 and MAMP 1.8.3.

1. Download the newest version of WordPress, and unzip the contents. At the time of this posting, version 2.9.1 is the latest incarnation.
2. Copy the entire WordPress directory to your MAMP/XAMPP installation (the “htdocs” directory inside the MAMP folder on OS X), or to your web server. For SEO purposes, you should place the WordPress directory inside a folder titled “Blog” — this is only necessary if you’re actually planning to use WordPress, and you’re not just testing it locally.
   




3. Launch MAMP/XAMPP, and click “Start Servers” to activate the Apache and MYSQL servers. If you are using your own web server, you can skip this step.
   




4. Browse to the MAMP/XAMPP start page at http://localhost:8888/MAMP/ and access PHPMyAdmin from the top menu. Once in PHPMyAdmin, create a new database. I’ll call mine “wordpress” for simplicity’s sake. If you’re using MAMP like I am, a user “root” has already been established (with password “root” as well, no quotes of course). Root will be able to access all databases, but if you want to be safe you should add a new user instead.
   




5. Now it’s time to actually install WordPress. You can either edit the config.php file yourself, or use the WordPress installation wizard (recommended). Browse to http://localhost:8888/wordpress (assuming you kept the wordpress folder’s original name — change this in your URL if necessary). You’ll need to enter the name of the database (“wordpress”), the username (“root”), and the password (“root”). Your server is localhost if you’re using MAMP. If you’re using your own web server, the hostname will generally be either localhost or your domain name, but you should check with your hosting provider to be certain.
   




6. If all has gone well, you should now have a working WordPress blog! Congratulations! Feel free to email me or post comments if you have any questions or concerns. Thanks.
   
   

   Congratulations, your WordPress installation should now be up and running.