Next we will launch Apache & MySQL. To do this easily, open the Control Panel.

Click Start on both Apache and MySQL.

Now, if you want, you can install Apache and your local webserver to another port like 8080. To change the port, you want to navigate to your XAMPP directory (e.g., C:/xampp/apache/conf) and open the file httpd.conf in your text editor. On line 45, you'll find:

To change it to port 8080, simply make this change:

Then later, on line 176, you'll see:

ServerName localhost:80

Change it to:

ServerName localhost:8080

If you switch to port 8080, you'll need to to always go to it via localhost:8080. Furthermore, WordPress will not allow you to enable multisite locally with a port number trailing localhost. It will redirect you to http://localhost/xampp/ or http://localhost:8080/xampp/.

You're host directory will be C:/xampp/htdocs based on httpd.conf. If you wish to change it, simply find it in httpd.conf on line 183 and make whatever changes you'd like.

PHP comes installed with a preset configuration. In local environments, I tend to set things a lot higher than I normally would in a production site simply because it is for me and for strenuous testing, auditing, developing, debugging, etc.

So navigate to the C:xamppphpphp.ini file and open within Notepad++.

The file will look like this initially.

Go to line 451, and make the following changes:
https://gist.github.com/9318470
This will allow you to do a bit more with the PHP instead of it timing out on you periodically.

And then on line 922, change upload_max_filesize to upload_max_filesize=100M
This will enable you to be able to upload large files to the WordPress Media area.

Then on line 1045, change the default timezone. For more information as to what value to place there, see http://php.net/date.timezone.
This obviously sets the server default timezone.

Now, there are other customizations you can make to the INI file, but these basic changes are all the essential ones.

4. Create a New Database

After you’ve installed XAMPP, run it by opening a browser and going to localhost, which will take you to the splash page.

Click on your preferred language. It should take you to the start page, http://localhost/xampp/.

Now click on phpMyAdmin at the bottom left.

In the phpMyAdmin page, create a new database by clicking on Databases at the top.

Since this is local anything will do (eg. prefix_wordpress). However, you want a more complicated database name than this to protect yourself from SQL injection on the internet. Adding a prefix will create folders to help with the organization.

Now go to phpMyAdmin, and create a new database (eg. prefix_wordpress) by typing in your database name (e.g. wordpress) and pressing CREATE.

Before You Get Started

WordPress needs PHP and mySQL to run. This tutorial installs via XAMPP, not WAMP or MAMP (Mac), so I will not be going into any details regarding WAMP or MAMP, but some of the things will apply to them as well.

1. Install XAMPP, a Local Server

In order to run any PHP/database application on a local computer, you need a local host (ie. Apache + MySQL). So go and download the most recent version of XAMPP or the version from this tutorial is XAMPP 1.8.3 (Sourceforge Old Versions, Windows Version, 128MB).

[browser-shot width="600" url="http://www.apachefriends.org/index.html"]

I personally disable BitNami, but feel free to include it.

Once installed, move to the next step. You may go ahead and launch the Control Panel, but do not do anything yet. First we must configure the PHP modules to ensure that we have everything set as we need.