What is WordPress

WordPress is a tool that is nowadays a lot used to create websites.   Nowadays it's used in about 40-45% of all websites all over the world.

In the good old days we had DreamWeaver and the like to do this kind of jobs, but that's long gone...

Installing WordPress

WordPress can be started in two different flavours:

1. Directly on your website

2. Locally on your PC

The first option is a no-go for me, as I have to pay extra for WordPress on One.com and I don't want to go that route.

To run WordPress locally, you have to have a web server running and also a database.  A perfect tool for this is the package XAMPP.  This contains, next to other stuff, the Apache web server (the "A" in XAMPP) and the MySql database (the "M" in XAMMPP).  In fact, behind the scenes it's MariaDB which is running, but from a user's perspective that's transparent.

XAMPP

First, I downloaded XAMPP and ran the setup executable.  Once the installation is done, you can start the XAMPP server by running the command xampp-control.exe.  It will start up the XAMPP Control Panel dialogue box.

When the control panel is up and running, press the Start button for both the modules Apache and MySQL.

Once the server is up and running, you can access the phpmyadmin page by entering the following URL in a web browser:

http://localhost/phpmyadmin

Default port used is 80, so no need to specify it explicitly.

It will open a web page with an impressive amount of tabs on top and a general overview of what's installed (server, database, PHP extension, phpMyAdmin,...).