If you are already a WordPress developer that has made at least a site or two and you want to take things to the next level by having the ability to create WordPress sites locally on your computer without having a hosting account or a domain name, consider Bitnami for WordPress. Perhaps you want to do this because you want to practice using WordPress. Perhaps you want to try out some themes or even develop your own theme or plugin. How do you do set up your own local development environment (aka sandbox)?

Instructional Videos

You can start by downloading Bitnami for WordPress. There is a short (3:30) YouTube video called How to Install WordPress Locally on your PC (and practice making your website) that shows you how to download and install Bitnami.

Here is another one called 18min WordPress Installation Tutorial with Bitnami. He uses the Astra theme and shows you how to install that.

Wikipedia says this about Bitnami: “Bitnami is a library of installers or software packages for web applications and solution stacks as well as virtual appliances. Bitnami is sponsored by Bitrock, a company founded in 2003 in Seville, Spain by Daniel Lopez Ridruejo and Erica Brescia. Bitnami stacks are used for installing software on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and Solaris. VMware acquired Bitnami on May 15th, 2019.” It goes on to say: “Bitnami stacks are available for web applications such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, Redmine, AbanteCart, PrestaShop, Magento, MediaWiki, and many others. In addition to the application itself, the stacks include the other software required to run that application. For example, a WordPress stack will include WordPress, as well as the MySQL database to manage data, Apache Web server to serve the pages, OpenSSL library for basic cryptographic functions and PhpMyAdmin to administer MySQL. Bitnami installers are released under the Apache License 2.0″.

I’ve installed Binami for WordPress a couple of times. It’s files take almost 1 GB. The file name is bitnami-wordpress-5.5.1-1-windows-x64-installer.exe. It takes a few minutes to install. Along the way are a few parameters to provide. Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge them.

manager-windows.exe

Under the folder that was installed, run the manager-windows.exe file. You need to have the Apache Server up and running.

If the server is running, we can open the website.

One at a Time

In my experience I’ve found that you can only have one Apache server running at any one time. This means that you cannot work on two different WordPress websites at the same time. It is a good idea to stop the Apache server after you are done working on your Bitnami WordPress site.

Another Option

Alternatively you can use ServerPress. I’m currently using XAMPP / MAMP / WAMP / Bitnami / InstantWP / AMPPS / Web Matrix, can I use DesktopServer? You cannot run DesktopServer and another webserver or MySQL database engine at the same time. You should uninstall or disable your existing webserver and MySQL engine before running DesktopServer. Pay careful attention as some services like to restart themselves or run when you reboot your computer. Programs like Microsoft Web Matrix fail to uninstall completely and might prevent DesktopServer from starting correctly. Be sure to check the troubleshooting section at the bottom of our install guide and feel free to ask us for assistance. With a proper installation of DesktopServer, you can save countless hours!