Post to answer repeated requests from a friend

What is a sandbox? In computing, this term can be described as:

a testing (or virtual) environment that isolates untested code changes and outright experimentation from the production environment [Wikipedia]

In our context, this would mean an environment in which we would play around by tweaking themes, modifying code, adjusting css, etc… and view the results, without having to break our *live* online site, plus nobody will see when strange mistakes occur in our code! Afterwards, the completed code/theme/css can be uploaded to the site. Why make it offline? It is much faster as no ftp is required.

Creating the Sandbox

Now, the first step you need to take is to install an Apache server on your windows PC. Okay, i will say this only once, this is NOT as complicated as you might be thinking it is, i would even say it is freaking too easy! and the is how you do it:

1. download Xampp.

download Xampp

(Note, the light version is fine if you are only installing wordpress.) I vould recommend you to download the exe self extracting archive

2. Extract the zip package (Or the exe self extracting archive, depending of which you have downloaded) to the root directory of your hard drive (giving something like C:/xampp



3. when extraction is over, double click on the Xampplite folder. the folder will contain these files among others:
   
4. now open “setup_xampp.bat”
5. after the success message open “xampp-control.exe” and click the indicated buttons to start Apache and mysql, thus getting Xampp working the way we need it to.



6. Now go download wordpress

download Wordpress

7. Okay, now extract the zip archive to c:/xampp/htdocs, (or c:/xampplite/htdocs, depending on what version you downloaded.) thus obtaining a directory
   

   c:/xampp/htdocs/wordpress

   OR

   c:/xampplite/htdocs/wordpress

   (Again depending on the version you have downloaded.)

8. Okiie, okay till now? right, almost over. now in the wordpress directory, rename wp-config-sample.php into wp-config.php, open it, and edit it so that it looks like:

// ** MySQL settings ** //
define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'root'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', ''); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value

And save the file. (the code below needs not be changed.)

9. Okay, now is when it starts to become interesting. launch yout browser to
   

   http://localhost/

   And choose a language you understand.

10. Click on phpmyadmin in the tools section of the sidebar
11. in the Create new database field, type wordpress, and set the combo box (list) to utf 8 unicode (normally last in the list) and click create.
12. Now it definitely gets familiar. go to
    

    http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

And follow the instructions.

Finished!! then your local blog address is

http://localhost/wordpress

Tadaa! its done!