Starting WordPressing On

After visiting several church, scholarly and news sites (including the New York Times!) that were incredibly well presented ,noticing that little wordpress logo at the bottom .A click here and there led on& into the wordpress.org world a first look …remember the wardrobe   . .

Attracted by the order that categories and tags brought to quite large volumes of materials the  brain started churning over the possibility that ;if “that” could be installed on my grimy little whirring machine , possibly  my personal journal, work and study materials could be brought to  some presentable and meaningful  sort of order . So it was that I was irrevocably started on the road  to attending that wordcampuk event last Saturday in Birmingham. Its been an interesting and enriching road just as was the wordcampuk day itself .I will tell you a bit more about it in future posts .There is one up already about the wordcampuk day and another coming shortly about how I got there in the end happy with my own locally hosted wordpress site . Obviously because you are reading this a journey that’s taken a different turn to what I expected and  I am now

                                               wordpressingonthankyouverymuch.

How  I set up wordpress on my computer as a “localhost” website  

WordPress Installed Locally on your own Hard Drive

if you want to be installed locally on your computer rather than at wordpress.com  ,or even on a usb stick )then this  link is the one that helped me set it up.

 

http://pinoy-blog.isoftinno.com/2007/11/21/how-to-install-wordpress-locally/

 

It  is quite straight forward  to follow the instructions in this link.

They are in my experience idiot proof  at my level .Yes it worked for me fine (after I had tried and failed  using several other  similar links which always had a trapdoor of some sort  that I invariably fell down.)

 

I suggest you try it on the computer hard drive before attempting it on a USB stick.

A couple of things to be aware of   

1)Note that  you want to download   “windows installer”package   from xamp  ( that’s a normal windows installation package  type thingy)  that keeps it simple for  setting up and getting you as far as the control panel .(print off the link so you can refer to it whilst installing )  

2) If you have Skype set up you will need to follow the instructions mentioned  I did I cant remember what I did but the instructions worked.

3 ) These instructions are for WordPress  up to version 2.5   I have never tried it with version 2.6   but I think that they  will work with it * see note below

 

What is the advantage of installing it locally  

 

 You have it to work on even if you do not have a connection

 Linking   to files on your own computer follow slightly quicker and easier  

You have total control over it

You can developed”it yourself in ways that they wont let you at www.wordpress.com  you can do what you want with it . ( its you system that crashes not there’s )

Some of the plug ins and themes available you cannot use if you host  www.wordpress.com   ( but that is because they are the ones that are sometimes unproven or because someone sells them . WordPress only do free, unless you have  gynormous site

 

 Oh one more thing   when downloading stuff  to install  on your machine or on another hosting service your will be dealing with

  www.wordpress.org     that is the place where the word press thingy  is cooked up and served out .

Its the same but  different to the other one where they host it and keep it warm for you    [they may be in rooms next to each other so to speak, but they are different and your log in for one doesn’t work for the other .

This has  caused me some confusion to start with  especially when you go to the help forum bit . I have become confused and  never quite sure which  room I have knocked on and asked for help and why they are not answering my log in.

*

·         I successfully  installed two different instances of  word press on my local host server using v2.5 but  when I attempted a third using 2.6 version … the team never came out of the pavilion to play  .Having talked to some real computer people at the recent wordcampuk I think that 2.6 would install if it was the first ( and only ) kid on the block but it defiantly wont go in lower down the list  unless extra special provision is made for it. Provision that is beyond my current  computing skills level