How to Install Joomla Locally on a P.C.

Following on from other newsletters where we showed you how to set up Joomla on a Mac and also how to develop locally and moving your site to a live server, this week we're going to walk you through installing Joomla locally, on a P.C..

We're going to use WAMP for this tutorial.

WAMP stands for "Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP" which are the different elements that allow you to run Joomla on your computer.

Here's how you do it:

Download WAMP to your computer.
Run through the WAMP installation process.
In your taskbar, down the by the date in the bottom-right hand corner of your screen, look for the WAMP icon. Click on that icon.
You should see a popup. Click "Start All Services" and then click "Localhost."
Hopefully you'll see a white screen with the Wampserver logo in the top-left corner.

Go to Joomla.org and click on the black button saying "Download Joomla. Get the Latest Version". Find the line saying ".... Full Package" and click on the "ZIP" text.
The file you download should have a long name such as Joomla_1.5.15-Stable-Full_Package.zip

Click on the WAMP icon in your taskbar again and now click "www directory". This will take you to the folder where WAMP stores its websites.
Move your Joomla folder from Step 2 into this directory.
Extract the Joomla folder.
It will be confusing to keep accessing the website through a folder called /Joomla_1.5.15-Stable-Full_Package/ so rename the folder to something simple such as /joomlatest/

Click on the WAMP icon in your taskbar again and now click "phpMyAdmin". This will take you to the software where Joomla's databases are managed.
Find the field labelled "Create new database" and enter "joomlatest". Click "Create".
Hopefully you'll see the name "joomlatest" appear in the left column.

In your browser, visit this address: http://localhost/joomlatest
You'll see the the normal Joomla installation screen. Click through screen 1, 2 and 3.
On screen 4, these will be your settings:
- Host Name: Localhost
- Username: root
- Password: [leave this blank]
- Database: joomlatest
On screen 5, enter your site name plus a username, email and password.

Hopefully you still have your Joomla folder open. If not, click on the WAMP icon in your taskbar again and then on "www directory".
Rename the installation folder to something such as /installation-back/
Click "Site" on the final installation screen or visit http://localhost/joomlatest.

You should now have a shiny new installation of Joomla on your P.C. where you can develop your website securely in your local environment.

Video Showing How to Install Joomla Locally on a P.C.

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