How to use WordPress on your laptop
Some basics first. Beginners use the free, hosted WordPress blogs on www.wordpress.com. The next step up is to self-host your blog by using free software from www.wordpresss.org at a self-hosting service whom you pay around USD10.00 a month. The hoster, such as Dreamhost host a lot of WordPress blogs and will set up the basic shell for you within about 10 minutes.
If you want to be a little bit more ambitious and make or edit your own theme, then you can turn part of your own computer into a self-hosting service. The first step is to download WAMP (assuming you use Windows). WAMP gives you an Apache server, mySQL databases and PHPadmin.
All you do to get everthing running is
- Download WAMP into a directory c:/wamp (follow the download instructions)
- Set up passwords for root and IP 127… at PHPadmin activated following WAMPserver in Start/All Programs
- Use Windows Explorer to go to c:/wamp/apps/PHPadmin and edit your password the config.inc file
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘auth_type’] = ‘config’;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘user’] = ‘root’;
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘password’] = ‘yourpassword’;
- Set up a new database ready to receive your wordpress.
- Make a new directory under c:/wamp/www and upload an up-to-date version of wordpress from wordpress.org
- Edit the config-sample.php file following instructions at wordpress.org
Two important tips to using Wordress on Wamp
- When you edit the config.inc file for WAMP save it using the Save As command. Just closing the file updates the text but throuws up an error. Not sure why but i wasted an evening on this.
- When you are working with a fresh installation of WAMP, go into into its menu box and make sure the module – rewrite is on. If mod_rewrite is not on, you will not be able to use “pretty” permalinks. Your wordpress will say you are using them but when you try to view the page, you will get an error because wordpress cannot find the page in mySQL even though it is on!
Two time-consuming obstacles that you can avoid!
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