Few days back, I was giving a talk at User Track of WordCamp Mumbai 2012, on “Step by Step Installation of WordPress“. During session, I realised that 1 hour was not enough for people who are new to pick up all things from XAMPP to MySQL to WordPress and a complete step by step guide to install WordPress is needed. In this series of posts, I will detail about everything from downloading XAMPP to being a WordPress Spartan. Be patient and follow it from start to end as post might get a bit lengthy. Thanks to Arif Khan, for awakening me from geeks slumber and work on this post.
Please note that this post is about installing WordPress on your local machine or local server as well call it. If you want to install WordPress on your internet host, you can refer to How to install WordPress Blog

So beginning with it, I am pre-assuming that you know what the WordPress is and you are clear about what you want to achieve from it. I will only show you the easiest and best possible way to get that done. Enough said, lets begin

What things you need to install WordPress

1. WordPress :WordPress as you already know is the most popular CMS on World Wide Web. Written on php, it uses MySQL database to store everything and has the power to make deplying your blog/website in amazingly fast and easy way. Go to WordPress website and download the latest WordPress release.
   
   
   
   Unzip the files downloaded file. By default this will be unzipped in a folder named wordpress. Keep this safe, we will need it soon.
   
    
2. XAMPP : If you are a newbie, the best way to configure Apache web server, php and MySQL on your localhost is by downloading and installing XAMPP.
   You can assume XAMPP as a local server, similar to the one about which you see in TV advertisements of BigRock, Godaddy, HostGator etc. This can run your php files, can save content in your database and make local websites look like real website. This is a great tool which makes life easier by installing and preconfiguring all needed things to give real life server capabilities to local machine.
   
   
   
   
   To download XAMPP, go to Apachefriends.org and download XAMPP for your operating system. Ones downloaded, double click and install the XAMPP in your system.

Now you have all the things that we will need in setting up your first WordPress blog. Lets move ahead with installation and setting up your blog. In case you are still on IE, please move to Chrome, Firefox or Safari for better results.

Steps to Install WordPress

1. Go to the direcotory(usually c:/xampp) where you have installed xampp and locate application named xampp-control.exe
   
   
    
2. Open XAMPP-Control, it will open up a dialogue box like the one shown in image below. You can see, it will provide you a lot of options like Apache, MySQL, FileZilla, Mercury etc. For the time you can forget about others and click on the start button in front of Apache and MySQL.
   
   If the installation was successfully done, this will start both services successfully and xampp-control will show you port numbers of both services. At same time start buttons will get changed to stop buttons.
   
   
    
3. Open your browser, and type http://localhost, this should open an orange colour web page with XAMPP written in centre. If you got up to this, congratulations your server set-up is complete. Select the language in which you would like to proceed from the options mentioned on the webpage. Ones you choose your preferred language, a new page will be presented in front of you similar to the one shown below.
    
   
    
4. Click on “Status” menu item on the left hand side menu. This page shows the health of all the services that are currently enabled on your local server. It lists a number of services but we are only worried about MySQL Database and PHP. Both the services should be marked as Activated for WordPress to install and run successfully.
    
   
    
5. Move to the directory where you installed XAMPP and locate a folder named htdocs. Inside htdocs, place the WordPress folder we had unzipped and kept aside in beginning of the post.
   Now we have everything in place needed to run a WordPress website. The only thing we need to do more is to create a database that is needed by WordPress at time of install.
    
6. Open browser, go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin, on the home page in centre division you will find a text box to create a database. Choose name of your database as you like the most and hit “Create Database” button. After this, you will see a new database being added to the list of already existing databases on left side division. You now have a database that WordPress needs to save its files, details and structure.
    
   
    
7. On the browser type http://localhost/wordpress, where WordPress is the name of the folder you just placed inside htdocs. This will open up a html page with some sort of warning written saying that wp-config.php file is missing. Nothing to panic, this is the expected behaviour as we have yet not set up database and site details in WordPress configuration file. Simply hit the “Create a Configuration File” button and move to next page.
    
   
    
8. The next page for the first time shows a WordPress logo to you. This page is a simple check-list for all the things that you will need while setting up your blog. As you are currently doing it on your local server, we have it all. Hits the button at bottom of the page and move to next page.
    
   
    
9. The next page requires you to enter parameters needed for setting up database connection. Enter database name as the name you used to create database, write user name as root and keep password blank. Leave last 2 fields untouched. Click the submit button and move to next page.
    
   
    
   Important: Please note that root is a default user with blank password. In real world for security reasons it is always advised to create a new user with secure password.
    
10. The page coming next congratulates you for successfully completing all steps needed for a successful install of WordPress. Hit “Run the Install” button and let WordPress do the magic for you.
     
    
     
11. Ones successfully installed, it will ask you some more questions like Site Title, user name for admin account, password, your email id and whether you would like search engines to index your website or not. Enter the details and hit install WordPress.
     
    
    
    This step completes the installation part of WordPress. You site is completely installed and can now host your all blogs, pages and all your dreamed content.
     

Login to the WordPress with the user name and password you just created. If you have entered your user name and password correctly and WordPress install was error free then you will be able to login to admin panel and that will look similar to the one shown below
 


You can any time access your WordPress Dashboard by entering http:///wp-admin as url on your browser. As currently we are using localhost, type http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin

This brings us to the end of the post. We have successfully installed WordPress on a local machine and are now ready to supercharge it with themes, plugins and most importantly awesome content. Before coming to the end of the post, lets see how your web blog is currently looking to your visitors.
 


It contains your site title as header, a small tag line below it, a header image and a small sample post. So are you liking current state of your blog or are want to quickly change its theme to something brilliant and awesome? In next posts, I will detail you about all things in WordPress and how to use them to create your awesome blog without writing a single line of code.

Things that you can expect in coming posts of WordPress series

Before I move to write my next post, I would love to have your inputs on this post. Was this helpful for you in setting up from scratch or some things are missing. Let me know in comments below and will try my best to make this your ultimate guide to installing WordPress.

PS: If you are planning to setup your blog and need my help, let me know via comments below. I have 4+ years of experience with WordPress and know what exactly your blogs need. Moreover, I won’t be charging any thing for it