


As WampServer is made up of several programs created in various versions of Microsoft’s Visual C program it is important that you install the dependency files first before installing WampServer. To set up WampServer we will need a few files firstly the WampServer files themselves as well as several of Microsoft’s VC Redistributable packages. Other systems exist like LAMP for Linux or MAMP for MacOS and you could even use this to set up other dynamic web platform like Joomla or Druple, but my guide below deals with installing WordPress on the software WampServer on a Windows 10 PC (although installing on Windows 7 should be similar).

This is where WAMP comes in, it is the software stack that bundles all these programs on Windows so you can set up a mini server to host your website locally on your own PC. To run WordPress on a server you need 3 bits of software that operate in the background, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Fortunately there is a way to develop with WordPress offline and that is to set up a local WAMP server on your PC. In the old days you could develop your new static html files locally and ftp them when you were happy to go live with your new site. That drawback is that if you want to make huge changes to a template or a transfer a site from static files to WordPress there maybe a downtime of your site if you are doing it all live. While its advantages over creating sites with static html files include the vast amount of templates and plugins available there is one minor drawback when it comes to developing with it. What started out as a blogging platform now powers the over 35% of the websites you may visit.

If you plan to host anything more than static web pages, PHP will be an essential companion.If you have ever done any website development you are bound to come across WordPress. WordPress, Facebook, Joomla, and many other websites and content management systems utilize PHP. PHP - The most popular language for writing dynamic web content - by far. usernames and password for web accounts), which is where MySQL comes in. A lot of dynamic web pages need to store data (i.e. MySQL - This provides a database for your web content. With it alone, you can host HTML files and other static web content. Windows - The "W" in WAMP is just there to specify that the program is compatible with Windows operating systems.Īpache - This is the program that is used to actually host your website. Otherwise, you'd have to download the three packages separately. WAMPs are convenient because they allow you to download and install all of the packages you need for hosting dynamic web content in one fell swoop. When you download a WAMP, you are just downloading a program that installs three different things. WAMP is an acronym that stands for "Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP". If you just want a local development server, then keep reading.
