How to Install WordPress on Windows 10 Using WAMP (2022)

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If you are completely new to the use of local servers and want to start somewhere, you are at the right place. This is a complete guide to WAMP WordPress installation. The guide is divided into two portions for the ease of the readers and to compile as much information, on how to install WordPress locally on WAMP, as possible. WAMP & WordPress combination has been used extensively for quite some time now and has now become quite an ordinary practice. The advantages of using a local server, like WAMP for WordPress, are one of the many reasons for the exponential growth in its use.

The articles will be covering how to install WAMP Server, How to install WordPress locally on WAMP, a WAMP Server tutorial, advantages of WordPress on WAMP Server, along with some tips and tricks to help resolve some of the most commonly arising issues while installing WAMP for WordPress.

 

This Install WordPress Locally using WampServer (WAMP) tutorial is split up into two parts:

  1. Installing WampServer on our local computer (This article)
  2. Installing WordPress on Wamp Server on your local computer

Scope of 1st part of the Guide

In this post, we will install the software environment that WordPress needs to run (server, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). In the second part, we will actually discuss how to set up WordPress on the WAMP server.

This part of the article will be dealing with all the necessary information for the initial aspects of using WordPress on WAMP Server. For instance, I will be highlighting the importance of using a local server, and, will then move on towards talking about the WAMP for WordPress in particular. A little background knowledge and a basic introduction of the WAMP Server will also be provided to set up the base.

There are many advantages to installing WordPress on your pc locally. Most importantly, it allows you to make changes to your themes and test new plugins before activating these on your live websites. A local installation is also ideal to test new versions of WordPress or making sure nothing breaks before updating it on your server. Moreover, you can carry out all your testings without the fear of network failures. So, all-in-all it’s recommended to set up WordPress on WAMP or any other local server before uploading it to your live website.

Otherwise, you can go through the guide on How to Install WordPress, if you do not wish to do it locally. Moreover, you cal also Install WordPress Quickly using SSH.

A bit of background for beginners

Before officially beginning the WAMP Server tutorial, here is a little background on WordPress and WAMP Server. WordPress was built to be run on an online server, not on a pc. And To install locally WordPress on WAMP Server, we first need to create a server environment on our computer. Luckily, this is very easy.

WordPress needs Apache (or any other HTTP Server), MySQL, and PHP to run. This is a pretty standard configuration for servers. On Linux servers, this environment is often called a LAMP-stack (Linux Apache MySQL PHP). On Windows, it’s called WAMP, and on Mac, MAMP.

Several companies and organizations have created WAMP stacks. XAMPP, EasyPHP, and WampServer are among the most used. For a full comparison, have a look at this Wikipedia article.

In this tutorial, we’ll install WampServer on a laptop computer running Windows 7. But since we’re in the Windows 10 era, I will start with some uses of the WAMP Server and some tips that you need to follow to run your WAMP server, and Install WordPress on the WAMP server on Windows 10.

Uses of the WAMP Server

Although I have initially mentioned at the very start, the benefits of using a local server like WAMP. However, to clear any ambiguity that is left in the uses of the WAMP Server, this portion will be enough!

WAMP is a combination of Windows, Apache, MySQL database, and PHP. It helps to create a web development environment locally on your PC for hosting websites on it. It works as a testing server so that you can check what your website will look like or how it would work, from back-end perspectives as well.

Each component has its own task and accounts for its presence in the WAMP.

  • The “W” is for highlighting the fact that the WAMP Server is for Windows operating system.
  • The “A” is for the Apache server that serves the requested website by granting the request over HTTP.
  • The “M” is for MySQL database that can be used to store all the relevant information relating to the website and its contents.
  • Lastly, the “P” stands for PHP programming language used to write WordPress. It glues the whole software together, responsible for the communication with MySQL.

Things to remember before Installing WAMP server on Windows 10

Before starting off to learn and understand how to install the WAMP Server, there are some preliminary conditions and requirements that are to be met. The WAMP & the WordPress installation will become easy, as well as efficient if these conditions are met and the steps on How to install the WAMP Server are followed in the given manner.

If you are setting up WordPress locally on a WAMP server, chances are that you are using Windows 10. For this OS, the procedure is more or less the same, but you do need to Install better versions of the required software that I’ve mentioned below:

Download & Install Visual Studio 2012 VC 11 before Installing the WAMP server for it to work properly. Please make sure to download the correct version according to your Windows bits. Although officially, this specific package is required but to avoid any issues in 2024, I recommend installing/re-installing the  Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable packages from VC 9 to VC 16.

And to find out the version of your Windows 10, navigate to the following path:

 Click on Start menu > Select the Settings Icon > Click on System > Select the About option

Here you’ll be able to find your desired information under device specifications.

2020-12-26_19-38-36

Download WAMP Server

In order to begin with the WAMP Server tutorial, head over to the download section on the WAMP Server website. The WAMP Server website always has the latest WAMP version.

wampdl

Choose the right version to download based on the following criteria:

  • WampServer has versions for Windows 32 bits and Windows 64 bits. Read this article if you´re not sure which version of Windows you’re running. Choose the corresponding version of WampServer. Or choose the above-mentioned method to find out your Windows version.
  • Choose the PHP version you wish to install. Before putting WordPress on the WAMP server, check if the latest requirements of WP are compatible with your server.  You can easily check the updated requirements by clicking on the provided link: (check here). Ideally, you’d use the same version as your live website is using.
  • If you want to install and test an older version of WordPress on the WAMP server, or maybe you want to Install the WAMP server on an older version of Windows. Then I recommend downloading older WAMP versions from the provided Sourceforge link on the website.

Download the version you want to install.

Note: In the pop-up dialog box, WampServer will notify you of any additional software that you need to install, like Visual C++. As we have mentioned before please make sure to install these packages first before proceeding.

Install WampServer

After successfully downloading from the WAMP Server Website, double-click the icon and walk through the simple setup wizard. In most cases the default settings are fine. Also, note that you can always change these settings later. I usually only change the default browser from Internet Explorer to Firefox or Chrome. Here´s a list of all steps:

  1. Accept the license agreementInstalling WampServer locally
  2. Select a location where you want to install WAMPInstalling WampServer locally
  3. Check the boxes if you want to add shortcutsInstalling WampServer locally
  4. Click the Install buttonInstalling WampServer locally
  5. Select your default browser. Common locations:
    • Internet Explorer:
      C:/Program Files/Internet Explorer/iexplore.exe
    • Firefox:
      C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/firefox.exe
    • Google Chrome:
      C:/Documents and Settings/username/Local Settings/Application Data/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe
  6. Set the PHP mail parameters

The installation usually takes less than a minute.

If you see the following error message during the install: MSVCR100.dll was not found make sure you’ve installed Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package.

In case if you are wondering whether can you run multiple instances of WAMP, you can not run multiple WAMP servers on the same host. However, if by multiple instances of WAMP it is meant multiple websites on one WAMP Server, that is quite possible. To learn more about multiple websites, you can read more on Creating multiple Virtual Hosts/ Websites in WAMP Server.

If you want to know whether can you make a website using the WAMP Server, the answer is quite simple. If you create on WAMP, your website will be accessible on your PC by default. You can make whatever changes to it. However, until or unless you do not put it up online deliberately, the website would not be accessible by the rest of the world.

Running your WampServer for the first time

Run WampServer

Once installed, the next step is to learn how to use WAMP. Go to Start > All Programs > WampServer and click Start WampServer. For Windows 10, open WampServer from the desktop or search in the start menu, if you cannot see it on the Desktop

If everything went well, you´ll now see a small green icon in the lower right corner of your screen. This means all services are up and running.

The how to install WordPress on a website is discussed in the 2nd part of this guide!

If you see an orange or red icon, WampServer has not been able to start all services.

A common problem is that the port WampServer uses is already in use by another program. Skype, in most cases. If you have Skype installed on your computer, make sure it does not use port 80:

  1. Open Skype
  2. Go to Tools > Options
  3. Select the Advanced tab and then the submenu Connection
  4. Untick the box that says Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connectionsInstalling WampServer locally
  5. Restart Skype

Also, make sure your Firewall is not blocking WampServer.

As soon as the light is green, open your browser and navigate to http://localhost. (An alternative way to do this is by clicking your left mouse button on the WampServer icon and selecting the Localhost shortcut on top.) This should take you to the WampServer home screen.

WampServer

There are many local hosts for websites as WordPress on Windows Server present in the internet market to install WordPress locally besides WAMP. Few of them are:

  • MAMP
  • XAMPP
  • DesktopServer
  • Duplicator
  • Instant WordPress
  • Bitnami WordPress Stack
  • Sandbox

For more information on these and their comparisons, go through the article based on the Top 8 Best LocalTesting Environments for WordPress.

Issues of the WAMP Server

Although installing and setting up the WAMP Server is not a very difficult and complicated process, there might come times when you encounter an error or a problem. These issues are quite common in nature and therefore, their solutions are easy to find and implement.

For your ease, I have compiled here a list of the most common issues that come up when installing the WAMP Server. Along with these issues, the solutions of them are provided.

403 Forbidden Error

This is one of the most common issues. However, as common as it is, the solution is simple as well. The main reason for this issue is the permission mismatch. Follow the given steps to resolve the issue.

  1. Start by opening httpd.conf and find the text in the portion <Directory/>  </Directory> consisting Deny from all and replace that with Allow from all.
  2. Moving on, find this given piece of code  Order Deny, Allow, Deny from all, Allow from 127.0.0.1. You need to replace it with the next given here –  Order Deny, Allow Deny from all, Allow from all.
  3. Once these changes are made, restart all of the services of the WAMP Server.
  4. To make it start working, either click on the localhost, or you can go to the default browser and write localhost there.

Following these in order will do the trick, hopefully! If you would like a more detailed insight into this tutorial, go through the guide on How to Fix 403 Forbidden Error in localhost.

Missing DLL Error

The missing DLL error is another common issue that occurs frequently with WAMP installation. If you come across any of these error messages “missing VCRUNTIME140.dll and/or MSVCR110.dll”, it only means one thing. To resolve this issue all you are required to do is to install Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package for Visual Studio.

  1. For the missing VCRUNTIME140.dll, go to the link: Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable Update 3 and download & install the package.
  2. For the missing MSVCR110.dll, go to the link: Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 and download & install the package.

In case if the above-given solution does not work accordingly, you can also try out the following procedure. It might work if the other one is not providing any successful results.

There may be a necessity to download & install a simple C++ Distribution file. You can easily download Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86) file from the Microsoft website in the x86 or x64 edition.

Restart the WAMP Server after the installation. In case, if the server still does not work, reinstall the WAMP Server.

The Port 80 Conflict

This issue is also quite common in the WAMP installation procedure. If you see the orange icon and are unable to access localhost/phpMyAdmin in the browser, it probably is due to the reason that another service is using the port specifically used by Apache. Apache is by default programmed for port 80. Just by changing the port number, this issue can be resolved. Following are some of the services that listen commonly to Port 80:

  • Internet Information Server (IIS)
  • Microsoft HTTPAPI/2.0
  • SQL Server Reporting Services
  • Web Deployment Agent Service
  • World Wide Web Publishing Service

One of the solutions to solve this issue is to change the Apache port number.                                         

  1. You can start by editing the httpd.conf file. The file is present in              C:\wamp64\bin\apache\apache\conf directory location. To access the file directly, the given screenshot can help you.                                                                                                                                                                         httpd-file-Screen-Shot
  2. The file will open up in the text editor. When you will search for 0.0.0.0, the following set of lines will appear: Listen 0.0.0.0:80   Listen [::0]:80 
  3. You need to change the port number that is at the very end (80). Change the port number to any number. For instance: Listen 0.0.0.0:8080   Listen [::0]:8080
  4. Lastly, restart the WAMP Server. The icon will turn green, for sure! For another alternative version, go to the article on How to Fix Port 80 Conflict for WAMP? Another alternative is also given under the discussion on Running your WAMP Server for the First Time.

Disadvantages of Using the WAMP Server

AS already stated in the scope of this very article, there are many other local servers other than the WAMP Server. Each one has its set of benefits and issues and hence, so is the case with the WAMP Server. While going through the article, it can be concluded that the whole procedure of downloading and installing the WAMP Server is not so complicated. However, there are some disadvantages to using the WAMP Server instead of the others.

A few of the disadvantages are listed here.

  • One of the main disadvantages is that the WAMP is specified to only Windows Operating System. While there are many others that offer services for multiple operating systems, given the same environment and specifications.
  • WAMP has very basic features of a local server. Those are present in nearly all the other local servers. So if you are looking for extra features in a local server, you might not want to go with the WAMP Server.

Conclusion:

This concludes the first part of our “WAMP WordPress installation” guide. WAMP being a local server can be used for many essential purposes. One of its main use, the WordPress PHP local server testing, is discussed under the scope of this 2-part guide.

Now in the next part, I will take you directly towards the information about how to install WordPress on the wamp server. Moreover, you’ll also find some extra information on “how to use WAMP server” in our second part.

To create a WordPress site on WAMP, head over to the next part of this guide! The 2nd part talks in detail about setting up WordPress on the WAMP Server and all the other relevant information.

If you are looking for some other hosting platforms for WordPress, we have comprised a list of the 13 Best WordPress Hosting of 2024. You can also check out the ones with respect to Australia on the guide 13 Best WordPress Hostings in Australia.