One of the strengths of WordPress is the huge community of developers who create free plugins and themes that bloggers can download and use on their own WordPress blogs. A downside of this is that it is sometimes risky to test these plugins and themes on your live blog, particularly if you rely on your blog for income.
Fortunately you can mitigate this risk by making a copy of your WordPress blog on your computer using WAMPServer.
What is WAMPServer?
WAMPServer is a free web server that you can install on your Windows computer. WAMP stands for Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP. WordPress runs on Apache, MySQL and PHP so this makes WAMPServer perfect for installing WordPress.
How to install WAMPServer
Installing WAMPServer on your Windows PC is easy. Go to http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php and download the latest release of WAMPServer.
Run the setup file that you downloaded. You can pretty much accept the default choices for installation. Once WAMPServer is installed you can launch it from the Start Menu or from the desktop icon (if you chose to create one). The WAMPServer icon will now appear in the system tray. Clicking on the icon reveals a menu.
We’ll come back to this menu shortly.
How to install WordPress
First you need to determine which version of WordPress you are currently running. Log into your WordPress site and scroll to the very bottom of the dashboard. In the footer it will display a version number (eg version 2.6.2).
Now go to the WordPress release archive and download the zip file matching the version of WordPress running on your blog.
Unzip the file. It should unzip to a folder called “wordpress”. Move this folder and all of the files and subfolders within it to C:\wamp\www on your computer’s hard disk (or wherever you installed WAMPServer).
Now we need to perform a manual installation of WordPress. Click on the WAMPServer icon in your system tray and choose phpMyAdmin. Create a new database by typing the database name and clicking Create.
Now return to the folder where you extracted the WordPress zip file. Locate the wp-config-sample.php file and open it with a text editor such as Notepad. This is where we build the WordPress config. Change the following lines as shown here.
define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'root'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', ''); // ...and password
Save and close the file, and then rename it to wp-config.php. Now it is time to run the WordPress installer.
Open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost/wordpress.
Enter a blog title such as “My Test Blog” and an email address (anything is fine) and then click Install. When the install is complete (it only takes a second) note down the admin password that was randomly generated for you and then click Log In.
Copy your plugins and themes to your test blog
Now that you’ve got a blank WordPress blog installed for testing you can copy all of your existing plugins and themes from your live blog to your computer. To do this simply open your FTP client and copy everything in the wp-content/plugins and wp-content/themes folders to the same location in your C:\wamp\www\wordpress folder. Once the files have copied you can log in to the WordPress admin panel and activate the plugins, and also choose the desired theme.
Copy your blog content to your test blog
A test blog is not much use without some content in it so that you can see how different themes or plugins might effect your live blog. You can copy your blog content to your test blog thanks to the WordPress import/export feature.
Log in to the WordPress dashboard and click on Manage. You will see Import and Export options in the menu.
Click on Export, and then click the Download Export File button. This will download an XML file of all of your posts, pages, and other data such as categories to your computer. Once the download is complete log in to your test blog dashboard and click on Manage, then click Import. Choose WordPress from the list of import sources, then browse to the location you saved the download file and click Upload File and Import.
Another option instead of importing your live blog content is to use this sample blog content.
Begin testing!
You now have a local WordPress installation that you can use to test new plugins and themes without risking the stability of your live blog.
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Excellent web pages Successes and prosperity to you!
I followed your instructions, and they were very clear. But when I tried to import my blog, it wouldn’t let me. It seems that the file is too big. Is there another way?
Thanks.
The file size limit is 2mb and I’m afraid I don’t know any way to get bigger files to import.
However if you just want *some* content imported rather than that *exact* content you could use this sample content file instead.
http://wpcandy.com/articles/easier-theme-development-with-the-sample-post-collection.html
Amazing Article , I thought it was grand
I look forward to more innovative postings like this one. Does This Blog have a newsletter I can subscribe to for anymore information from you?
After finished the installation, I also encountered the same problem on file size. The xml file I exported from my blog is ~3.6MB while wordpress file size limit is 2MB. After searching the wordpress forum, I found this posting: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/255018?replies=3
I went to the link listed there, then created an .htaccess file, set the maxsize to 48MB, placed it in my root directory and it works fine. All my files were imported to my test site without any problem.
Thanks for your tutorial, Paul.
I created a Popular Posts widget on my local copy and now I can’t get rid of it. Even if I drag all the widgets out so there are none left in the sidebar widget sections the Popular Posts widget remains active.
Can you think of why this might be happening in my local copy?
Nothing springs to mind. If you deactivate and uninstall that plugin it should get rid of it though.
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