Have you ever wished you could develop WordPress on your computer? Well I have some good news for you! You can, and have been able to do it pretty much since the concept of WordPress went live. Its ok if your just now finding this out. I want to hold your hand and guide you through the proper steps to get a perfect local WordPress development environment setup.

Deciding MAMP or WAMP

This one is easy. Are you a MAC User or a Windows User? If your a MAC User you will need to install MAMP. If your a Windows user you will install WAMP.

Step by Step Directions how to install MAMP

Download the software http://mamp.info/en/ Click Download Now button. It’s a big download, so it takes a while to complete. (MAMP is free, but the download also includes the commercial product, MAMP Pro, which makes administering MAMP easier. You don’t need MAMP Pro for this tutorial, and you don’t have to install it either.) Once downloaded, the file will be in your downloads folder. Click it and it will extract itself, and have another folder where you can select 32bit or 64bit. Select 64 bit, then click the icon inside MAMP.pkg this will open and you will see below.

Continue to install it as you would any program. After its completely installed you can find it in your Applications folder. Find the MAMP folder and click on the icon inside of it to launch your new server. (I suggest making a shortcut to your htdocs as well as a shortcut to the MAMP icon that launches the program as shown below)

Configure MAMP Configuring MAMP is simple, click on the preferences button on the launch screen.

You will see a few tabs with multiple options.

As you may or may not know, port 80 is the standard port for web servers. That being said you will need to change the port 8080 to 80. This can easily be done by clicking Set to default Apache and Mysql ports!

Now that everything is configured click the open start page button.

Now that your up and running create a new database using the phpmyadmin link. Then download the newest version of WordPress and place it in the htdocs folder that can be located by going to Application/MAMP/htdocs. This tutorial is just an intro to getting a local Apache Mysql PHP server running. If you need help installing WordPress on MAMP, there comment below. If I see theres a need, I will create another post on how to install WordPress on MAMP.

Step by Step Directions how to install WAMP

Download the software http://www.wampserver.com/en/ Click Download Now button. It’s a big download, so it takes a while to complete.  Locate the downloaded zip file and extract it. Then launch the installer.

Installing Windows programs are thoughtless. Just continue clicking next until you finally get to the last screen. Since your running Windows, you have a Firewall setup by default. you will need to go to the control panel and disable that, for WAMP to function correctly. Once your firewall is off, your ready to start configuring WAMP.

After installation WAMP should have automatically started itself. You can find the WAMP manger down by the clock. It looks like this.

You can now configure every aspect of your local server. Click on localhost to launch the starter home page. This will be replaced shortly by your WordPress installation files.