IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi, I am Morten Rand-Hendriksen, and
welcome to Installing and Running WordPress WAMP.
| | 00:10 | In this course, I'll show you how to install
WordPress on your computer so that it's easier
| | 00:15 | to experiment with and build content for WordPress without
relying on an external web host or an Internet connection.
| | 00:24 | I'll start by showing you where to get
WAMP and how to install it on your computer.
| | 00:29 | We'll look at how to configure WAMP and
WordPress to work together, and finally I'll show you
| | 00:35 | how to uninstall WAMP without
losing your content in the process.
| | 00:39 | Having WordPress installed locally on your
Windows computer will make it a lot easier
| | 00:44 | to experiment with and
build content for WordPress.
| | 00:48 | So let's get cracking with
Installing and Running WordPress WAMP.
| | 00:53 |
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| Who is this course for?| 00:00 | WordPress is a web publishing application
designed to publish content onto the web.
| | 00:06 | So why would you want to install a web
publishing application on your computer so you can access
| | 00:11 | it but no one else can?
Well, the answer lies in that question.
| | 00:16 | Having WordPress installed on a computer, it has a huge
benefit both for bloggers, for beginners, and for developers.
| | 00:25 | As a beginner, you need to understand how
WordPress works and familiarize yourself with
| | 00:29 | WordPress and all the ins and outs.
| | 00:32 | By having WordPress installed on your computer,
you can experiment it without having to install
| | 00:36 | it on an external host, and you can also get
to know the application in a safe environment.
| | 00:43 | And once you know how it works and you are comfortable with it,
then you publish it to a host, and then you can go live.
| | 00:49 | As a developer, if you want to develop a child
theme or a regular theme or a plug-in or some
| | 00:55 | other content for WordPress, you
should always do it in a local environment.
| | 01:00 | Because, if you didn't have a local environment,
you'd have to make a change to your file and
| | 01:05 | then push that file onto the web and then
onto a web server and then check it and then
| | 01:11 | push another change on to
the web server and check it.
| | 01:14 | But if you have a local environment to
work in, you simply make a change to the file,
| | 01:19 | reload your browser, and you
see that change immediately.
| | 01:22 | For myself, I have WordPress installed on
my computer so that no matter where I am,
| | 01:27 | I can always work on WordPress projects
without having to rely on an Internet connection.
| | 01:32 | Because let's face it, even though the
Internet is pretty much everywhere, you don't always
| | 01:37 | have a connection to the
Internet on your computer.
| | 01:40 | But if you want to work with WordPress, you
really either need that, or you need to have
| | 01:44 | WordPress installed on your computer locally.
| | 01:47 | Down to brass tacks, WordPress installed on your
computer is the number one tool in your WordPress toolkit.
| | 01:54 | And whether you're a beginner or an
advanced user, this is something you should have.
| | 01:59 | We've created this core series to give
you four different options that you can use to
| | 02:03 | install WordPress either on Macs or on PCs,
and we go through how to set it up, how to
| | 02:09 | use it, and how to uninstall it.
| | 02:12 | That way you'll have all the tools necessary to be able to
run WordPress locally on your computer and develop great things.
| | 02:20 |
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| Overview of options: BitNami, WAMP, MAMP, and WebMatrix| 00:00 | This course is one of a series of four
courses that map out four different tools you can
| | 00:06 | use to install WordPress on your local computer.
| | 00:09 | Depending on your platform, your level of
expertise, and what you want to achieve,
| | 00:15 | either one of these four tools
may be the correct one for you.
| | 00:18 | So before we get started, let me break down
the different options so you can pick the
| | 00:23 | right tool and the right course
for your needs right off the top.
| | 00:28 | If you're a Mac user, I recommend using MAMP.
| | 00:32 | MAMP is an application that installs a web
server on your Mac and then you can link that
| | 00:38 | web server to WordPress so that you can run
WordPress as you would on a web server on the web.
| | 00:45 | MAMP requires a bit of configuration to work,
and it can be a bit tricky, but once it's
| | 00:50 | up and running, it's very easy to work with.
The second option for Mac users is BitNami.
| | 00:56 | BitNami is a one-click installation that installs
both a MAMP server and WordPress and links it altogether.
| | 01:04 | So you just install BitNami and then
you have WordPress running on your Mac.
| | 01:09 | The problem is BitNami can be a bit buggy
on Mac, and it can be a bit hard to stop and
| | 01:14 | start and things tend to happen with it, and
that's why I don't recommend it as the first option.
| | 01:21 | But if you're looking for a simple one-click
install, and you don't want to worry about
| | 01:25 | configurations, BitNami is the way to go.
Windows users have more options.
| | 01:31 | For Windows users, my primary
recommendation is to use BitNami.
| | 01:35 | It's the same application as the one available
for Mac users, but it works a lot better on Windows.
| | 01:42 | In fact, I use BitNami for all my development work
because it's so easy to work with, and it works really well.
| | 01:49 | I've tried all the other
options, but I stick with BitNami.
| | 01:53 | If you want an option, you can
install WAMP on your Windows computer.
| | 01:57 | Now WAMP is exactly the same as MAMP except the W at the top
stands for Windows, whereas in MAMP the first M stands for Mac.
| | 02:07 | It's a web server that you install and
then you can configure it to talk to WordPress
| | 02:11 | and make it all work together.
The last option for Windows users is WebMatrix.
| | 02:17 | WebMatrix isn't exactly
the same as BitNami and WAMP.
| | 02:22 | In addition to being a server environment
where you can run WordPress and other open-source
| | 02:27 | applications, WebMatrix is also a web development
tool that you can use to develop web applications.
| | 02:35 | So in addition to having WordPress run under
WebMatrix, you can also use WebMatrix to build
| | 02:41 | WordPress or build themes for
WordPress or build plug-ins for WordPress.
| | 02:45 | However, WebMatrix is very different from
BitNami and WAMP in that it installs a large
| | 02:52 | list of applications onto your computer
and changes the overall configuration of your
| | 02:57 | computer in the process, in effect making your
computer into a proper Windows-based web server.
| | 03:04 | Before you embark on this course, it's important
that you pick the correct tool for your purposes.
| | 03:11 | You can either watch all the four courses
and then based on those decide which tool
| | 03:16 | you want to use, or you can pick the tool you think will
work the best for you and then just watch that course.
| | 03:24 | We've created one course for each tool so
that it's easy to compare them and also so
| | 03:29 | that it's easy to both install,
troubleshoot, and uninstall each of the solutions.
| | 03:35 | In this course we'll be
looking at WAMP for Windows users.
| | 03:40 | If you're a Windows user and you want to
use BitNami or WebMatrix instead,
| | 03:45 | or if you're a Mac user and you want to use MAMP or BitNami
instead, go back to the lynda.com online training library
| | 03:52 | and select the course that
corresponds with your choice.
| | 03:56 | And don't worry about making the wrong choice.
| | 03:59 | Each of the courses in this series also shows you how
to uninstall each of the options if you don't like it.
| | 04:08 |
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1. Introduction to WAMPWhat is WAMP?| 00:00 | Before we get started, it might be a good
idea to clarify what WAMP is and how it works.
| | 00:07 | WAMP is an acronym that stands for Windows,
Apache, MySQL, PHP. Windows is, well, Windows.
| | 00:16 | Apache is a web server application you will find
running on a large portion of web servers around the world.
| | 00:23 | MySQL is the database system used by WordPress
and PHP is the server-side scripting language
| | 00:30 | or programming language used by WordPress.
| | 00:33 | In plain English, this means by installing WAMP,
you've installed the necessary applications
| | 00:39 | and programming components to run
WordPress on your Windows computer.
| | 00:43 | Once WAMP is installed, you are in effect
turning your Windows computer into a web server
| | 00:49 | much like the web servers that
would host WordPress on the web.
| | 00:53 | This allows you to install
WordPress on your Windows computer.
| | 00:57 | The major differences between running WordPress
on a web server on the web and running WordPress
| | 01:01 | on WAMP on your Windows
computer are pretty obvious.
| | 01:05 | Because WAMP is installed on your computer, you
don't need Internet access to use your WordPress site.
| | 01:12 | This also means the site is only accessible
from your computer--that is unless you've decided
| | 01:16 | to make your computer a public web host--
something I don't recommend you do.
| | 01:21 | The true benefit of having WordPress
running on WAMP, on your Windows computer is that
| | 01:26 | you can work with the files directly, and you
don't have to keep uploading and downloading
| | 01:30 | them to and from your web server.
| | 01:33 | They're all there ready for you
to work with and experiment with.
| | 01:37 | Now that you know what WAMP is
and how it works, let's get started.
| | 01:42 |
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| Downloading WAMP| 00:00 | The first step in installing WordPress under WAMP
on your Windows computer is getting WAMP itself.
| | 00:07 | WAMP is free to download and free to use
because all the components within WAMP are free
| | 00:13 | open-source software just like WordPress.
| | 00:16 | To get WAMP, you go to wampserver.com, click on the Download
button, and from here you get the different options.
| | 00:24 | WAMP server comes in
several different varieties.
| | 00:27 | You probably want either the WAMPSERVER (64 BITS and PHP 5.3)
or the WAMPSERVER (32 BITS and PHP 5.3).
| | 00:37 | If you don't know whether or not your
Windows installation is 64-bit or 32-bit, you can
| | 00:42 | find out by going to the Start menu, right-clicking
on Computer, selecting Properties, and then
| | 00:50 | under System Type here you'll see it will either say
64-bit Operating System or 32-bit Operating System.
| | 00:56 | So you pick whichever one
fits with your Operating System.
| | 01:01 | I am going to pick the 64-bit version, and
when I click on it, I get to this warning page.
| | 01:07 | Here I get a link directly to the
download for WAMP, but I also get this warning.
| | 01:13 | You must install Visual C++ 2010 Service
Pack 1 Redistributable Package x86 or x64.
| | 01:22 | Based on the crazy long name, I can see
that this is some sort of Windows service that
| | 01:27 | needs to be installed for WAMP to
work, so I have to install that first.
| | 01:32 | I can follow the link that corresponds to
my Operating System, so again it will have
| | 01:36 | a 64-bit Operating System, so I am going to
open this link in a new window, and then I
| | 01:43 | am going to download
this application and run it.
| | 01:50 | In most cases you'll just get this standard
install, but in some cases you'll find that
| | 01:55 | your computer may already have this package
installed, in which case you'll get a question,
| | 02:00 | do you want to repair it
or do you want to remove it?
| | 02:03 | If you get that message instead, then simply cancel
out of the installation and move on to the next step.
| | 02:09 | The next step is to download WampServer itself.
| | 02:12 | So, we're going to follow the link here, you
can download it directly, and this takes you
| | 02:19 | to this sourceforge page where you have
to wait for the countdown to complete before
| | 02:24 | WampServer is downloaded onto your computer.
| | 02:27 | My tip to you here is don't click anything
on this page. Just wait until the download
| | 02:32 | is complete, show it in the folder if it's there,
go and close your browser, and then you're ready to go.
| | 02:41 | Like I said earlier in the course, WAMP is
the environment in which WordPress will live.
| | 02:47 | So now that you have WAMP downloaded, you
also need to get WordPress onto your computer.
| | 02:52 |
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| Downloading WordPress| 00:00 | WordPress is a free open-source
application in a constant state of upgrading.
| | 00:06 | As a result, anytime you want to install WordPress--
whether that be under WAMP or on a web server
| | 00:12 | somewhere on the Internet--you should always go
to wordpress.org and download a new fresh copy.
| | 00:20 | That way you know you are working with the
latest version of the application and that
| | 00:24 | that version is clean and untouched.
| | 00:27 | You get WordPress from the main
WordPress website called wordpress.org.
| | 00:32 | From here, you can find everything that you
need to know about WordPress, you have themes
| | 00:36 | and plug-ins and support and documentation and
most importantly you can download WordPress itself.
| | 00:43 | To get to WordPress, you either click the
blue Download button right here, or you click
| | 00:48 | the red button for the Downloads,
takes you to the same place.
| | 00:52 | On the Download page, you can download
the most recent version of WordPress.
| | 00:57 | Currently, the most recent version is WordPress 3.5.
| | 01:01 | I can click on that link, and I download
WordPress in a zipped format to my computer.
| | 01:07 | But here's something interesting, if you for
whatever reason are looking for an older version
| | 01:12 | of WordPress, let's say you are testing for
backwards compatibility, or you have an installation
| | 01:18 | that requires an earlier version, maybe
because your PHP version is too low, you can actually
| | 01:23 | get access to any version of WordPress all the
way back to the beginning right from this page.
| | 01:30 | What you do is you go to the Release Archive
right here on the left side and in the Release
| | 01:35 | Archive, you can see you have every single
version of WordPress ever released,
| | 01:41 | all the way from 0.71-gold, which was released in 2004,
all the way up to the most recent version, which currently is 3.5.
| | 01:50 | Now I have both WAMP server and WordPress 3.5
downloaded onto my computer, and I can start working.
| | 01:58 | When starting a new WordPress site,
there's one thing you must remember, and I cannot
| | 02:03 | stress this enough, always, always, always
download a fresh version from wordpress.org.
| | 02:09 | It's a good habit, and it
ensures that you are always current.
| | 02:14 |
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2. Installing WAMPInstalling WAMP| 00:00 | Now that we have both the WAMP server and
WordPress downloaded onto our computer,
| | 00:06 | we can start by installing WAMP.
| | 00:08 | I will start the installer, and this is a
standard installer, so you just follow the
| | 00:14 | instructions, first I will accept the License Agreement and
then I want to install WAMP on to my computer. Here is a trick.
| | 00:23 | If you install WAMP right on the root like
it suggested here, you see it says C:/wamp,
| | 00:29 | you may have trouble writing to the files
that are inside WAMP and those files will
| | 00:34 | include WordPress with other applications.
| | 00:38 | To ensure that other applications are able
to edit the files inside WordPress so that
| | 00:43 | you can build themes and plug-ins and other things, it's a good
idea to install WAMP under My Documents. I will click Browse.
| | 00:51 | I will go to my Operating System, find
Users, find myself, and select My Documents.
| | 01:00 | And you can see here that WAMP automatically
appends /wamp at the end of that folder.
| | 01:06 | So now I have the folder structure I want
Users/Morten/Documents/wamp, and I click Next.
| | 01:13 | If I want to, I can now create a
quick launch icon and a desktop icon.
| | 01:18 | I want to create the quick launch icon, but I
will leave the desktop icon unchecked, click
| | 01:24 | next again and then I will click
Install to get WAMP to install on my computer.
| | 01:30 | Once WAMP is installed, we
have to pick a default browser.
| | 01:34 | Because we're in Windows, the default browser
that's suggested is always Internet Explorer,
| | 01:40 | but if you don't want to use Internet Explorer--
let's say you want to use Chrome for instance--
| | 01:45 | you can navigate to Chrome
and select that one instead.
| | 01:51 | Now you have the option of
setting up PHP Mail parameters.
| | 01:55 | Now let me explain what this is.
WordPress has the ability to send you email.
| | 02:00 | This can happen if, for example, you forget
your password, you can get WordPress to send
| | 02:04 | you an email with your password or if you
have a contact form inside WordPress,
| | 02:09 | you can configure the contact form
to send you form entries by email.
| | 02:14 | But for WordPress to be able to send you email,
it needs an email server and WAMP does not
| | 02:19 | come with an email server and your
computer doesn't have one either.
| | 02:23 | What this option does is it allows you to
hook into a different email server, for example,
| | 02:28 | if you have Gmail or Yahoo Mail or Hotmail,
you can hook WAMP server into the SMTP server
| | 02:36 | for Gmail or Yahoo Mail or Hotmail.
| | 02:40 | This requires that you have access to those
services and that you know what you're doing.
| | 02:44 | If you don't have any of those and you don't want to
do this, you can simply click Next and pass through it.
| | 02:50 | Now to make sure everything works, I am going to
leave Launch WampServer 2 checked and click Finish.
| | 02:58 | If everything worked, you should now see
a little green W in your taskbar here.
| | 03:04 | This tells you that WAMP server is up and
running, and I can now click localhost, and
| | 03:10 | it will open my default browser pointing
directly at WampServer itself from which I can see
| | 03:16 | that WampServer is currently running.
As you can see, installing WampServer is very easy.
| | 03:23 | Once it's on your Windows computer and working
properly, it's time to set up the configuration
| | 03:28 | files to make it work the way we
want to and interact with WordPress.
| | 03:33 |
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| Installing WordPress| 00:00 | Now that WAMP is installed and working, we
have to install WordPress inside of WAMP so
| | 00:06 | that the virtual server can see it, and we
can access WordPress through our browser.
| | 00:12 | To do that I first need to unpack WordPress,
extract WordPress right here, and now I have
| | 00:19 | a folder here called wordpress that has all the
files and folders for WordPress stored inside.
| | 00:26 | Now I need to place this
folder inside WAMPSERVER.
| | 00:30 | The way to do that is to go down to your taskbar
and find that little W that points to WAMPSERVER,
| | 00:37 | click on it, and then go to
this link called www directory.
| | 00:43 | This opens a direct link to the web directory
under the WAMP web server; this is where we
| | 00:50 | are going to place WordPress.
| | 00:52 | All you need to do is grab the wordpress folder
with all the files and dump it into the www directory.
| | 00:59 | Now wordpress sits under WAMP.
| | 01:02 | To make sure that this works and that we
can actually access WordPress through WAMP,
| | 01:07 | you go back to your browser, you go to
localhost and then you just go /wordpress.
| | 01:16 | What you should see now is an
error message much like this.
| | 01:20 | There doesn't seem to be a wp-config.php file.
I need this before we can get started.
| | 01:26 | This means that we are
currently accessing WordPress.
| | 01:29 | The reason why we are getting this message
is because WordPress has not been configured
| | 01:34 | to talk to a database yet,
so WordPress isn't working.
| | 01:38 | But what we are seeing is that we are able
to access WordPress inside of WAMP server.
| | 01:44 | Now that WordPress is installed and
accessible, it means we are almost ready.
| | 01:49 |
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| Configuring WordPress and WAMP to work together| 00:00 | For WordPress to be able to work under WAMP
on your Windows computer, it needs a database
| | 00:06 | to place settings and content into.
| | 00:09 | This means we need to create a database for
WordPress and then tell WordPress how to access it.
| | 00:15 | We're going to do this by using the database
configuration tool that ships with the WAMP server.
| | 00:20 | You can either access it by going to localhost/phpmyadmin
or by going to the taskbar, finding the WAMP
| | 00:30 | logo, clicking on it, and selecting phpMyAdmin.
| | 00:35 | This takes you to the Login page for
phpMyAdmin and under WAMP, the Username and Password
| | 00:41 | are both blank, so you simply
leave them blank and then click Go.
| | 00:46 | This takes you to the phpMyAdmin interface, and
it's from here that we'll create a new database.
| | 00:53 | You go to Databases, the tab here at the top,
under Create database you put in a new database
| | 01:00 | name that describes what you're doing--I'll call this one
wampwp, because it's WAMP WordPress--and I'll click Create.
| | 01:09 | Now a database has been created, and now we
can configure WordPress to talk to that database.
| | 01:15 | So what we're going to do is run the
standard WordPress 5-minute install.
| | 01:20 | We'll go back to localholst/wordpress, and
here we get this error message saying we don't
| | 01:26 | currently have a wp-config file, so I am
going to click Create a Configuration File to have
| | 01:32 | WordPress make that file for me.
| | 01:35 | Now WordPress asks me for certain information that
I need to be able to set up the configuration file.
| | 01:41 | I need the Database name, which is what I
just said, it's wampwp, I also need the Database
| | 01:47 | username and the Database password.
| | 01:51 | The Database username inside WAMP is root
and the password is nothing, so it's blank.
| | 01:58 | Finally, I need the Database host which in
most cases is the localhost, and that's the
| | 02:03 | case here as well, and I also need a
table prefix, you'll see that in a second.
| | 02:08 | When I have all this information,
and I do, I click Let's go.
| | 02:13 | And then I have to fill in the information here.
| | 02:15 | So the Database name is wampwp or
whatever you set the Database Name to be.
| | 02:21 | The User Name is root, so this is the User Name for
WordPress to use the database, it's not your User Name.
| | 02:28 | the Password is blank, Database Host is localhost,
and I am also going to leave Table Prefix the way it is.
| | 02:36 | I'll click Submit, and if everything worked,
you get this message, All right sparky!
| | 02:41 | We've made it through this
part of the installation.
| | 02:43 | Now I can click Run the install, and we
run through the standard WordPress install.
| | 02:50 | Here you give the site a Title, so
I'll call it WAMP WordPress Site.
| | 02:55 | You have to set up a Username for yourself, it
should never be admin, I am just going to say morten.
| | 03:02 | You also have to set up a password for
yourself, and you have to set up an email address.
| | 03:09 | Now you have to do this even if you don't have an email server,
because that's how WordPress is tracking your account.
| | 03:15 | The last option here allows
search engines to index the site.
| | 03:20 | Now this makes no sense because your site
is on your computer and not on the Internet,
| | 03:24 | so search engines can't access it.
| | 03:26 | So you can choose whether you
want to leave this on or off.
| | 03:30 | This changes a bit of how WordPress works, but you
can always configure it inside WordPress itself later.
| | 03:35 | I am just going to leave it
on and click Install WordPress.
| | 03:39 | If everything works, we'll
get the message, Success.
| | 03:42 | And I can now either log in by clicking the
Log In button, or I can go directly to my
| | 03:47 | WordPress installation by
simply going to localhost/wordpress.
| | 03:51 | So that's what I am going to do and here you see my
new WordPress site running on WAMP on my local computer.
| | 04:01 | Once a database is set up under WAMP and WordPress is
configured to talk to the database, you're all set to go.
| | 04:08 |
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| Running WordPress under WAMP| 00:00 | If you've followed all the steps so far, you
should now have a fully functional WordPress
| | 00:05 | site running under WAMP
on your Windows computer.
| | 00:07 | To make it all work, all you have to do is
boot up WAMP and start the servers and then
| | 00:13 | go to your browser to visit the site.
| | 00:16 | Just for demonstration purposes, I've gone
in and turned off all the WAMP services so
| | 00:21 | that I can show you what
happens when WAMP is not running.
| | 00:24 | I'll go to my browser, go to localhost/wordpress,
and when I try to load WordPress, I just get
| | 00:32 | an error like this, Google Chrome
could not connect to localhost.
| | 00:37 | That's because WAMP is not currently running.
| | 00:39 | If that's the case, I need to go to my taskbar,
find my WAMP icon, which is now red because
| | 00:46 | it's offline, click on the WAMP icon,
and then click on Start All Services.
| | 00:53 | When the sign turns green, it means that all the services
are booted up and the virtual server is now running.
| | 01:00 | Now I can try to reload my page
and WordPress is now accessible.
| | 01:05 | If you don't see the WAMP logo in your taskbar,
it means that you haven't launched WAMP at all,
| | 01:10 | in which case you just need to
go to your Start menu and launch WAMP.
| | 01:14 | Now WordPress is running, and
we can take a look at our site.
| | 01:18 | This is what WordPress looks like on
the front-end when you first visit it.
| | 01:21 | If this is the first time you've ever used
WordPress, this is what WordPress looks like right out
| | 01:26 | of the box at the present time.
| | 01:28 | This changes over time, because
new themes and new designs come out.
| | 01:33 | If this is the first time you're using
WordPress, I would strongly recommend you go check out
| | 01:37 | the WordPress Essential Training Course that I created
right here in the lynda.com online training library
| | 01:43 | and then come back because then you need
a full rundown of how WordPress works.
| | 01:49 | I am just going to give you a brief demo.
| | 01:52 | To get to the back-end of WordPress, I am
going to go to localhost/wordpress/wp-admin
| | 01:58 | and then I am going to log in, my Username
is morten and my Password is my password,
| | 02:05 | I'll click Remember Me so I don't have to
keep putting this in every time I want to
| | 02:09 | log in, and I'll click Log In.
| | 02:12 | Now I get logged into the back-end of WordPress,
and from here I can do whatever I want in WordPress.
| | 02:18 | I can create a new post, I can publish that
post, I can view the post, here you see my
| | 02:27 | post, and you can view the posts in the index
and here you see the first post and then the
| | 02:32 | original post, and you can work with WordPress
just like you would with any other WordPress site.
| | 02:38 | As you can see, once you have WAMP and
WordPress configured, working with and maintaining your
| | 02:44 | local WordPress site becomes very easy.
| | 02:47 | Just remember to always start WAMP and start
the service if you want to work from the site.
| | 02:52 | Otherwise, all you get is an error message.
| | 02:57 |
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| Accessing WordPress from your desktop| 00:00 | Just like when you host your WordPress
installation on an external web host, you can access the
| | 00:06 | files of WordPress itself when it's
hosted under WAMP on your Windows computer.
| | 00:11 | To do that, all you have to do is go to your taskbar,
find the WAMP logo, click on it and select www directory.
| | 00:21 | This takes you directly to the
main directory for the WAMP server.
| | 00:25 | So anything under this directory will be
directly available to you through your web browser,
| | 00:30 | and here you find the wordpress
directory where you have WordPress itself.
| | 00:35 | WordPress itself consists of three folders, wp-admin,
wp-content, and wp-includes, and then a series of files.
| | 00:45 | The important folder here is the one that's
called wp-content, because this is where all
| | 00:49 | your plugging and all your themes are stored,
and also where any uploads would be stored.
| | 00:55 | When you're working with WordPress on a computer, you
are most likely going to be working in the themes directory.
| | 00:59 | This is where all your themes are
stored, and I'll show how this works.
| | 01:05 | If I put the directory on the right here
and then put my browser on the left, and I go
| | 01:11 | to the back-end of WordPress--I'll use the
WordPress menu and go to Themes--you can see
| | 01:18 | that we have two themes. We have twentytwelve
and twentyeleven, and that corresponds to
| | 01:23 | the two folders inside the themes
directory, twentyeleven and twentytwelve.
| | 01:28 | If I now install a new theme,
you'll see how that works.
| | 01:32 | So I'll go inside WordPress here, click
Install Themes, I'll search for twenty ten,
| | 01:37 | which is another default theme.
| | 01:40 | When I find Twenty Ten, I am going to click
Install Now, and now WordPress goes online,
| | 01:45 | finds the file, downloads it into the site,
unpacks the package and installs it into WordPress.
| | 01:53 | What you saw happen is twentyten now gets added to our
themes folder, and that is actually all that happened.
| | 01:59 | You've got new folder with the theme files in
it, and you place it inside the themes folder.
| | 02:04 | So now when I go back to themes you can
see we have three options, we have twentyten,
| | 02:10 | twentyeleven, and twentytwelve.
| | 02:13 | If I want to get rid of twentyten, all I
have to do is go back into the folder, select it
| | 02:19 | and click delete, and when I delete it from
my themes folder and reload the page inside
| | 02:25 | WordPress, you'll see we now
only have two themes again.
| | 02:29 | I'll put the folder back, and then if you go to wp-content,
you'll see the exact same thing happens with plugging.
| | 02:36 | Right now, we have two plugging, we have
one called hello and one called akismet.
| | 02:41 | If I go to Plugging and Installed Plugging,
you'll see we have Hello Dolly and Akismet.
| | 02:48 | If I want to delete Hello Dolly from within
WordPress, I simply select Delete, Yes, Delete
| | 02:54 | these files, and you see that hello
disappeared from my plug-in directory.
| | 03:00 | If you want to add a new plug-in, let's say
I want to add the contact form 7 plug-in, I
| | 03:07 | can search for it within WordPress, and
when I find it I can Install it, click OK, the
| | 03:14 | plug-in is downloaded and installed, and
it appears inside my plug-in directory.
| | 03:19 | So now you see if you want to add new plugging,
or you want to build your own plugging, or
| | 03:24 | if you want to add new themes or build your own
themes, you do it from within the wp-content folder.
| | 03:30 | You simply go to wp-content, pick themes,
and then you add a new folder and put your
| | 03:35 | new theme folders under that folder, or you
go to plugging and add your new plug-in there.
| | 03:42 | The great thing about having a local
installation of WordPress is that you have full access
| | 03:46 | to WordPress at the click of a button.
| | 03:49 | That means you can build your child themes,
your themes, your plugging and do whatever
| | 03:53 | experiments you want in a safe environment that
doesn't require web access. Pretty cool, eh?
| | 03:58 |
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| Setting up WordPress as a Windows library| 00:00 | Let me show you how to set up your WAMP WordPress
install as its own Windows library for easy access.
| | 00:07 | This doesn't technically have anything to
do with WAMP or WordPress, but it's a trick
| | 00:12 | that will make you're life a lot easier when
working with a local WordPress installation.
| | 00:17 | You already know that you can get to the
files of your WordPress install by going to your
| | 00:21 | taskbar, selecting the WAMP logo, then going
to www directory and then clicking on wordpress.
| | 00:30 | This is fairly easy but you can't use this shortcut
of that tag within other applications inside Windows.
| | 00:38 | For that you should build a custom library.
| | 00:41 | A custom library allows you to get a direct
link to specific folders within your Windows
| | 00:46 | computer without having to navigate to them.
| | 00:50 | You can imagine if you are inside an application
and you are working on a file and you need
| | 00:55 | to get to the WordPress directory, you
would literally have to go to Documents, then go
| | 01:01 | to wamp, then go to www, and then go
to wordpress to get to those files.
| | 01:07 | By making a library, it will make this a lot easier.
| | 01:10 | First, I'll go to Libraries, and I'll click
New Library, I'll call the library WordPress,
| | 01:17 | I'll open the library and then I'll
click the Include a folder button.
| | 01:22 | Now I can navigate Documents/wamp/www/wordpress,
and this brings me directly to the wordpress folder.
| | 01:31 | I'll click Include folder, and now you can see that
the library points directly at the wordpress files.
| | 01:38 | So accessing the WordPress files now becomes as simple
as opening the explorer and then just clicking WordPress.
| | 01:45 | We can take this a step further by grabbing
the WordPress library and bringing it down
| | 01:50 | into the taskbar and
selecting Pin to Windows Explorer.
| | 01:55 | Now WordPress appears as a
pinned item inside the taskbar.
| | 02:00 | So if I need to get to my WordPress files,
all I have to do is go down to the taskbar,
| | 02:05 | right-click on my folder, and select WordPress.
| | 02:09 | Here are my WordPress files, and
now I can make changes to them.
| | 02:14 | Knowing shortcuts like this Windows library
trick will save you time and frustration every
| | 02:19 | time you want to access the
files in WordPress on your computer.
| | 02:23 | Needless to say, all my computers have
a WordPress library just like this one.
| | 02:28 |
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3. WordPress and WAMPTroubleshooting| 00:00 | As with a WordPress installation on an external
web host, chances are you will run into issues
| | 00:06 | with your local version of
WordPress running on WAMP at some point.
| | 00:10 | When that happens, it's good to know how to
troubleshoot the situation and find a solution.
| | 00:16 | I'm not saying that WordPress is going to
crash all the time or that WAMP is going to
| | 00:20 | cause problems for you, but in some cases
you will run into issues, and it's a good
| | 00:24 | idea to know how to handle those.
| | 00:27 | The most common issue you'll find when running
WordPress under WAMP is that you can't access WordPress at all.
| | 00:34 | You've seen this previously in the
course, but I'll show it to you again.
| | 00:37 | The number one cause of this is that the WAMP
server simply is not running or may not be on at all.
| | 00:44 | If I go and stop all the services in the WAMP
server and then try to access WordPress, you'll
| | 00:50 | see nothing happens, where you simply can't connect
to localhost, because localhost is currently not running.
| | 00:56 | If this is the case, the first thing you should
do is make sure that you're running WAMP at all.
| | 01:01 | If you're not, you need to go to your Start
menu and start WAMP, and if you are running
| | 01:06 | WAMP, you need to make sure
that the server is online.
| | 01:10 | If it's not online, it will be red, click
on the icon, click Start All Services,
| | 01:16 | and the icon will turn green.
| | 01:18 | Now the services will be online, and we can go
back and reload the page and get access to WordPress.
| | 01:25 | Another common problem is that the configuration
file for WordPress has somehow gotten messed up
| | 01:29 | so that WordPress can't talk to the database.
I'll show you what happens when that is the case.
| | 01:36 | I'll go to my WordPress installation here,
I'll find the wp-config file and open it in
| | 01:42 | a text editor, and then I'll make a change here.
I'll change the database username to
| | 01:49 | something else, save it, and
then try to reload the page.
| | 01:55 | When there's a database connection problem,
meaning WordPress can't access the database,
| | 02:00 | you get this really jarring message here,
Error establishing a database connection.
| | 02:05 | This is a common problem with WordPress, and
it's usually either because the database is
| | 02:10 | not running, which is rare, or more likely
because your wp-config file has gotten messed up.
| | 02:16 | Just like I did here, I messed up the wp-config
file, and to restore it all I have to do is
| | 02:21 | put the information back in.
| | 02:24 | Now remember, when you are working with WAMP, the
database name will always be whatever name you set it to.
| | 02:31 | The username for the database is always
root and the password is always nothing.
| | 02:37 | So if these three pieces of
information are in, you should have no problems.
| | 02:43 | Lastly, a lot of crashes inside WordPress
happens when people are working on themes
| | 02:49 | or plug-in or install new themes or plug-in.
| | 02:53 | When that happens, you can get all sorts of
weird behavior, like you can't access WordPress
| | 02:58 | at all, or you can only access parts of it, or you
get big error messages in the middle of the page.
| | 03:05 | If you've just installed a new plug-in or a
theme, or you've made changes to plug-in or
| | 03:09 | themes, and you see this behavior, it's
relatively easy to get rid of the problem.
| | 03:15 | The simplest thing you can do is actually to
go into WordPress, the folder, go to wp-content,
| | 03:22 | and go to either plug-in or themes depending
on what you just installed and either rename
| | 03:28 | the folder for that plug-in or
theme or delete it altogether.
| | 03:32 | That way, WordPress will reset back to a
default and get rid of whatever problem was there
| | 03:38 | and then you can try to figure
out what caused it to begin with.
| | 03:42 | So whenever something crashes, don't panic.
| | 03:45 | Just go in and try to revert back to an
earlier state, take away something you just installed,
| | 03:51 | and everything should
come back and work normally.
| | 03:55 | Most problems with WAMP are caused by incorrect
configurations or that servers are turned off.
| | 04:01 | Only rarely do you have to uninstall and
reinstall the application to solve the problem.
| | 04:06 | When that happens, you should follow the
procedure explained in the next movie
| | 04:10 | so that you don't lose your content in the process.
| | 04:15 |
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| Uninstalling WAMP| 00:00 | There are many reasons why
you may want to uninstall WAMP.
| | 00:04 | It could be because it's not working or because
you're not using it or a myriad of other reasons.
| | 00:11 | If you plan to uninstall WAMP but you want
to keep the option open to use WordPress under
| | 00:16 | WAMP again later without having to reconfigure or
repopulate the site, follow the following procedure.
| | 00:23 | That way you get WAMP off your computer
without losing all your work in the process.
| | 00:29 | Before we do this, it's important
to understand how WordPress works.
| | 00:33 | As you have seen, WordPress consists of a
series of files and folders, that's the application,
| | 00:38 | and then in addition we have a
database that contains all the content.
| | 00:42 | When we want to uninstall WAMP, we first have
to make a backup of the content within WordPress,
| | 00:49 | that is the content we want to save, and we
also want to make a backup of the database
| | 00:53 | so that we can reinitialize the database later.
| | 00:56 | The first thing we are going to do is
make a backup of my WordPress content.
| | 01:00 | So, I'll open a new explorer window, go to
Documents, create a new folder, call it WPbackup,
| | 01:09 | and then I am going to grab the
wp-content folder and copy it over.
| | 01:13 | My wp-content folder contains all my themes,
all my plug-ins, and if I uploaded content
| | 01:20 | to my WordPress site, for example this penguin
image here, that is placed in the uploads folder
| | 01:27 | which is also under wp-content.
| | 01:31 | To make sure that WAMP will be able to talk
to WordPress once it's installed, I am also
| | 01:36 | going to back up the wp-config file.
| | 01:40 | Same thing, I'll just copy it
over into my WPbackup folder.
| | 01:44 | The wp-config file contains all the information
that allows WordPress to talk to the database.
| | 01:50 | So, now all I need to do
is back up the database.
| | 01:54 | To get to the database, I can go to my toolbar,
find the WAMP icon, click on it, and go to
| | 02:00 | phpMyAdmin, or I can just
go to localhost/phpmyadmin.
| | 02:07 | If you get to the login window here, remember that in
WAMP, the login username and password is blank or nothing.
| | 02:15 | So just leave the two fields empty and
click login, and you get into this area.
| | 02:20 | Once inside phpMyAdmin, I'll click on my
database, it's down here, it's called wampwp.
| | 02:28 | Here we have all the database entries, and
now all I need to do is click the Export tab.
| | 02:34 | I'll select Custom, scroll down, make sure
that Output is set to Save output to a file
| | 02:42 | so that the output is actually
saved to a file that I can save.
| | 02:46 | Scroll further down, find the option that
says Add DROP TABLE and check it and scroll
| | 02:53 | down to the bottom and click Go.
| | 02:56 | This creates a SQL database file that's
a complete dump of the entire database.
| | 03:02 | That means when I now create a new database
later, I can simply import the SQL file and
| | 03:08 | all my original content is
put into the new database.
| | 03:12 | I'll go to the folder where the SQL file is
saved and simply move it into my backups folder.
| | 03:20 | Now that I have my content, my configuration file, and
my database backed up, I am ready to uninstall WAMP.
| | 03:29 | To uninstall WAMP, I am going to go to My
Documents where I installed it, find the wamp
| | 03:33 | folder, and click on the uninstall application.
| | 03:38 | This will run the WAMP uninstaller, but once it's
gone, you will see that there are still files left.
| | 03:44 | When you uninstall WAMP, it's smart enough
to know that there is a chance you might want
| | 03:48 | to reinstall it immediately, so it
leaves key content inside your computer.
| | 03:54 | The problem is in many cases, you might uninstall
WAMP and then wait a few weeks and then reinstall
| | 03:59 | it or maybe longer and then reinstall it, and
in that case, chances are you may have deleted
| | 04:05 | your WAMP folder or even worse, you may
have deleted your entire My Documents.
| | 04:11 | That's the reason why I want you to do an
actual full backup, because if you do a full
| | 04:15 | backup, you know where your key files are
so that in case something happens, you can
| | 04:21 | bring those files back in, whereas if they
are saved under the WAMP folder, chances are
| | 04:25 | they might be deleted inadvertently.
| | 04:28 | So I am going to go to Documents and actually
delete the wamp folder completely, so you
| | 04:32 | see how you can reinitiate
your sites from scratch.
| | 04:36 | Now that WAMP has gone from my computer, I
can no longer access WordPress from my browser
| | 04:42 | there's nothing there, and that
means I am ready to reinstall WAMP.
| | 04:48 | So I am going to go back to my Downloads
folder and find the original WAMP installer,
| | 04:53 | and if you don't have it, just go back
to wampserver.com and download it.
| | 04:58 | I'll run the installer just like I did before
and make sure I set everything exactly the
| | 05:03 | way I did it originally, click Browse, I'll
go to my operating system/Users, find myself,
| | 05:11 | and select My Documents, and I click Next.
| | 05:16 | I can now create a Quick Launch icon and then I'll
click Install to get WAMP to install on my computer.
| | 05:22 | I'll set my default browser.
| | 05:26 | The default browser that's suggested is
always Internet Explorer, but if you don't want to
| | 05:30 | use Internet Explorer, let's say you want
to use Chrome for instance, you can navigate
| | 05:35 | to Chrome and select that one instead.
| | 05:39 | Skip past the PHP mail system
and check Launch WampServer 2 now.
| | 05:47 | Now if I go down into my toolbar, you will
see WampServer is active, and if I click on
| | 05:51 | it, I can go to www directory.
This looks exactly like it did before.
| | 05:57 | So now I can open my WordPress download and
drag WordPress into the www directory, and
| | 06:05 | once this is done, when I go back to my browser,
go to localhost/wordpress, I'll see that same
| | 06:13 | error page that says we
don't have a configuration file.
| | 06:17 | That's because we're now working with a fresh
version of WordPress, and we have yet to set
| | 06:21 | up a database for WordPress. So that's next.
| | 06:25 | And I'll go back to my toolbar, click on the
WAMP icon, go to phpMyAdmin, I get back into it,
| | 06:33 | but I no longer have that database.
| | 06:34 | So I am going to go to Databases, create a new
database with the same name, wampwp, click Create.
| | 06:43 | Once the database is created, I'll click on it,
go to the Import option on the tabs, choose File,
| | 06:50 | and navigate to my WPbackup and find
my backup SQL file, click Open, scroll down
| | 06:59 | and click Go, and now my original
WordPress database is imported, but if I go back to
| | 07:06 | localhost/wordpress and try to reload
the page, I still get the same error.
| | 07:12 | That's because WordPress doesn't know
that it needs to talk to the database yet.
| | 07:16 | So that's the last thing I need to
do to get WordPress to talk to WAMP.
| | 07:21 | I'll go to my www folder right here,
I'll just put it on the other side.
| | 07:26 | I'll open wordpress, and you see we currently don't have
a wp-config file, we only have the wp-config sample file.
| | 07:34 | But you remember, in the backups we
made a backup of the wp-config file.
| | 07:39 | So, now I can take that file and copy it over,
and when we go back to the browser, I can
| | 07:46 | reload it, and now we have
access to our WordPress site.
| | 07:50 | However, there is one last problem.
| | 07:52 | You see the image that I had here?
The one of the penguins is now gone.
| | 07:57 | That's because we are now working with the
stock-wp content folder for WordPress, and
| | 08:02 | it doesn't have our uploads and our
custom themes and all that other information.
| | 08:05 | So I am going to go into www folder under
wamp and delete the wp-content folder altogether.
| | 08:14 | And then I'm going to go to my backups, find the wp-
content folder in my backups, and simply copy it back in.
| | 08:22 | Now, when I reload my page in the browser,
the penguins image is there, and if I had
| | 08:32 | any custom themes or custom plug-ins,
they would also now be active.
| | 08:36 | By following the correct procedure and
exporting your content, your configuration file,
| | 08:41 | and your database before uninstalling WAMP,
you ensure that if you ever want to reinstall
| | 08:46 | WAMP and keep using your original content later,
you can do so without having to rebuild everything.
| | 08:54 | Now you know how to install, set up, and use
WordPress on your Windows computer with MAMP.
| | 09:00 | All that's left to say is go forth and code.
| | 09:05 |
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ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 | Now that you have WordPress running on your
computer using WAMP, it's time to delve deeper
| | 00:05 | into the topic of WordPress.
| | 00:08 | If you haven't really used WordPress before, I
encourage you to take the WordPress Essential
| | 00:12 | Training Course right here in the lynda.com online
training library, but that's not all we have to offer.
| | 00:19 | If you go to lynda.com and then you put a
forward slash at it and type in M-O-R-1-0,
| | 00:24 | mor10, you will find a list of all of my courses
on WordPress that are in the lynda.com Library.
| | 00:32 | We have everything from Essential Training
to how to build child themes, to how to use
| | 00:37 | different themes to very advanced topics,
and I am not the only author in the lynda.com
| | 00:42 | Library to talk about WordPress. There are
lots of extra courses on everything from security
| | 00:47 | to multi-sites to other topics that you can
invest some time in and learn how to use WordPress
| | 00:54 | to make professional websites.
| | 00:56 | To get more information about WordPress
itself, you should go check out wordpress.org.
| | 01:02 | This is the website that has all the information
about WordPress the application, and here you
| | 01:07 | find a lot of cool stuff like themes and plug-ins.
You can also find lots of information in the forums.
| | 01:15 | And most importantly, if you are a
developer, you find the WordPress Codex.
| | 01:20 | This is where you find information about how
WordPress works and what you can do with it.
| | 01:25 | Every piece of code that's in WordPress is
documented in the WordPress Codex, and this
| | 01:29 | is a website I pretty much live on, because
anytime I need to do something advanced,
| | 01:35 | I can always find information about
how to do it in the WordPress Codex.
| | 01:39 | Now all that's left to say is good luck, build
something awesome, and come back and learn more.
| | 01:44 |
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