WordPress is free and open-source, based on PHP and MySQL. It is the most popular CMS on the web, with a market share of over 60% and millions of websites built with it.
WordPress was initially designed as a blogging platform, but it has evolved into a full-featured CMS that can be used to build any website, from small personal blogs to large corporate websites. It is easy to use, flexible and has a large community of users and developers contributing to its growth and development.
WordPress is known for its ease of use and a large selection of themes and plugins that allow you to customize the appearance and functionality of your website. It also has a robust system for managing and organizing content, making it a popular choice for content-rich websites.
To install WordPress on a Windows machine, you will need to have a web server installed on your computer. There are several ways to do this, but one popular option is to use a program called XAMPP.
Here are the steps to install WordPress on a Windows machine using XAMPP:
- Download and install XAMPP from the Apache Friends website (https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html).
- Start the XAMPP Control Panel and click the “Start” button next to the Apache and MySQL modules to start the web server and database server.
- Open a web browser and go to http://localhost/ to access the XAMPP dashboard.
- In the dashboard, click the “phpMyAdmin” link in the top menu to access the database management tool.
- In phpMyAdmin, click the “Databases” tab and create a new database for your WordPress site. Make sure to note the name of the database, as you will need it later.
- Download the latest version of WordPress from the WordPress website (https://wordpress.org/).
- Extract the downloaded ZIP file and copy the WordPress folder to the “htdocs” folder in the XAMPP installation directory (e.g., C:\xampp\htdocs).
- Rename the WordPress folder to the name you want for your website.
- Open a web browser and go to http://localhost/yourwebsitename to access the WordPress installation wizard.
- Follow the prompts in the installation wizard to complete the WordPress installation. You will need to provide the database name and other information you created earlier.
- Once the installation is complete, you can log in to the WordPress dashboard using the username and password you created during the installation process.
I hope this helps!