Try WordPress (self-hosted) for free

WordPress is the world's most used CMS and blogging platform. Which is professional as well as free and open-source. Every beginner WordPress blogger who is either creating a new blog or is migrating from blogger to WordPress, feels worried because of no idea  how exactly a WordPress self hosted website/blog actually works.

Wordpress.org self hosted

The best way to learn is to use a self-hosted WordPress on a server. So, let's to do it but for free. We'll require two things-

• A server
• A copy of latest WordPress release

How to set-up server on your localhost?

1. First know if you are using 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows.
2. To know that, just right click 'My Computer' icon and select 'Properties' or alternatively press & hold 'Alt' key and double click 'My Computer' icon.
3. Go to WAMP's website and download 32-bit or 64-bit server for your 32-bit or 64-bit Windows respectively.
4. Install it. On launching the installed server application look for the WAMP server icon in your taskbar's tray. It must be green. It is green when it is functional otherwise red or orange.

Final test

Open your browser and type 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1' localhost's IP address. You will see WAMP SERVER homepage. You are now good to go.

How to install WordPress?

1. From WordPress.org download a copy of WordPress.
2. Extract it on your drive.
3. Open extracted folder and in that folder you will find another folder named 'WordPress' copy that.
4. Now, open the directory where WAMP is installed and then go to 'www' folder. Generally directory address is 'C:\wamp\www'.
5. Paste 'WordPress' folder copied in Step 3.

Creating WordPress Database

1. Go to phpMyAdmin by typing 'localhost/phpmyadmin' in the address bar of your browser.
2. Select 'Database' tab.
3. Under 'create database' enter name of your database. It can be anything but make it simple like db, wp, wpdb, etc.
4. Click 'Create' button. Success message will show up.

Creating WordPress Configuration file

1. Go to your local WordPress site by entering 'localhost/wordpress' in the address bar of your browser.
2. Click 'Create a Configuration File' button, then on the next page click 'Let's go!' button.
3. Enter the name of database you just created via phpMyAdmin, 'root' as username, leave blank the password, 'localhost' as Database Host and 'wp_' as Table Prefix.
4. Click 'Submit' and then click 'Run the install' on the next page.
5. Now enter your sites details like your Site Title, a username and password. Remember these are your WordPress username and password, that you will use to login into your blog/website.
6. A success notification will appear, with your credentials.
7. Accessing Your blog
8. With WAMP server running, enter localhost/wordpress in the address bar and your site will open up.
9. To Log In use the 'Log in' option from meta menu or access 'http://localhost/wordpress/wp-login.php'.

Using the above steps you can install many copies of the world's most popular CMS. Just rename the wordpress folder to anything else, say 'st',1,2,etc. And while trying to access use the appropriate url like, localhost/st, localhost/1, localhost/3, etc.