A while back, I was working on a client’s WordPress theme, and out of nowhere, my internet went down! I was pretty screwed, as it was down for hours. For a WordPress theme developer, internet down time can cost you some serious cash.
A couple weeks later, my web host went down because of a server crash. Again, time is money for someone who does freelance work. I got really frustrated, and decided to do something about it.
I went looking for something that would allow me to work, even if I had no internet connection at all.
Installing WordPress on Windows
What I found was XAMPP. Because I use a Windows desktop at home, this was perfect for me. It basically does everything for you to set up WordPress. It installs PHP, MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, WordPress, and Apache (web server). It has a couple of steps that you need to follow, but if you can install WordPress on your web host, you won’t have any problem installing it locally on your Windows box.
But recently, I bought a MacBook. And since I take working vacations where I use my laptop to do work, I needed a solution for my mac too (although technically, I could just use XAMPP, since I did dual-boot my MacBook with Windows).
Installing WordPress on your Mac
1. XAMPP for MacOSX
This was really cool, since I was already familiar with the XAMPP program. Click here to visit the page and download the program.
2. MAMP
This is the solution I found via Ben Bleikamp, one of my colleagues at the Blog Herald. He also gives a nice little tutorial on how to install it and get it running on your mac.
So no matter what operating system you use (ok, Linux users should be able to install WordPress manually), you can get WordPress installed and running, so you never have to depend on that net connection to develop your themes. It’s saved my butt quite a few times, and I imagine it will yours too.