Installing WordPress on WAMP localhost

Some things to check:

1) When you activate WAMP, is the icon green in your system/icon tray? If it’s not green something is wrong.

2) Are you creating a subfolder in WAMP’s www folder to house your WordPress install?

3) Did you move WAMP after install?

You could try uninstalling WAMP and reinstalling it following the instructions in The Handbook.

Something that you may wanna check as well.

you may have some kind of conflict with port 80. i believe skype and teamviewer may be using port 80.

skype
Run Skype
Go to Tools> Options > Advanced > Connection
Uncheck the option that says, “Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections”
Click Save
Exit and then restart Skype
Restart wamp

teamviewer
Run TeamViewer
Go to extras> Options >
Click on advanced> show advance options
Check the option that says, “Don’t use incomming ports 80 and 443 ”
Click Ok
Exit and then restart TeamViewer

there may be others just in case if you still have issues.

Hi Howdy_McGee,
Thank you for the information.
Yes the WAMP icon is green.
Yes the WordPress folder is under the www folder.
No WAMP has not been moved.

I would prefer not to uninstall WAMP as I have a separate genealogy site running on WAMP with over 4000 images/documents and I’d prefer not to potentially compromise that work.

I have checked WAMP via https://localhost and WAMP indicates that all is well, it even shows the wordpress directory as a project.

Hi Benjamin,

Yes I’m running both of these apps but none of them are auto launched and in both cases I am unable to find the location that you refer to. The versions of my apps are:
Teamviewer 13.2.14327
Skype 8.32.0.53
As I start these apps when I need them should their settings make any difference as they’re inactive and therefore not using a port.

Hi branko3184,
Can you please make sure you are accessing the WordPress install file via the localhost and not by directly clicking on the file.
Refer to this thread for more info.

Is your other website a PHP site or a static HTML site ( on your localhost / WAMP )?

Hi Howdy_McGee,
It is a PHP site.

Hi Shashi Kumar,
Wow, feel like a fool, I totally forgot to use the localhost to access the install file.
The install appears to work fine now, thank you.

Now my other problem is that I don’t have a database for WordPress to connect to, therefore it appears that I can’t complete the install.

The web site that I want to create the dev environment for already exists and is backed up to a Dropbox account using UpdraftPlus and it looks like the site only has a Backup/Restore licence.

I am now trolling through UpdraftPlus to see how to migrate the site to localhost or should I use FTP. I assume that then I’ll have to go through the WordPress install again to connect to the database when migrated.
Where should I place the site, my structure on localhost is:
www
genealogy site
wordpress
wp-admin
…

Should the dev site be under www or wordpress. Where is WordPress expecting to see the database?.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by branko3184.

Hi branko3184,
Glad it worked. Can you please follow the steps mentioned in How to install WordPress in WAMP.
Once your WordPress start running in localhost. You can restore website using updraftplus plugin automatically or manually copying files.

Hi Shashi Kumar,
Thank you, all worked well, the WPBeginner instructions were much better than those that come with wordpress.
All installed and appears to be working well.

My new issue is when I try to load the UpdraftPlus plugin I get the message “The uploaded file exceeds the upload_max_filesize directive in php.ini”. I have checked via the Media Add New and the limit is at 2MB.

I have located the “How to Increase the Maximum File Upload Size in WordPress” doc in WPBeginner but am unable to actually locate the place where to make the change.
I have located the php.ini file in c:wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.23\bin\php.ini where I did find a reference to “upload_max_size’ , ‘2M'” which I changed to 64M but it has made no difference. I have also found the same php.ini file via WAMP menu PHP->PHP.ini and it shows the change I made.

The WPBeginner doc also refers to function.php file. The default theme for wordpress appears to be “twentyseventeen” and in the themes directory I did find the file but it has no reference to upload file size.

I know I’m doing something wrong but can’t figure it out.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by branko3184.

Hi Shashi Kumar,
Well I got tired of chasing my tail, so I shut the laptop down and went to have some lunch. Upon my return, I started again, logged into localhost wordpress, back to Media, Add New and now it indicated that 8MB is the upload size limit. No idea how and where that got changed but I proceeded to upload UpdraftPlus and it worked. High five.

Then I went into localhost Updraft Plus and created the Site Key.
When creating the site key a message flashed up saying “Your PHP install lacks the openssl module. After about 20 seconds the key was provided. Various site key’s were created with both 2048 and 1024 encryption key size.
I copied the site key to UpdatraftPlus in production and the Send option became available. I clicked on Send. The production UpdraftPlus recognised the Site Key and advised it was sending to site https://localhost/tag, so far so good. Updraft Plus commenced testing the connection and returned an error message “Unexpected response: Error: Unexpected HTTP response code 404”. The rest of the message is advising to that the firewall is potentially causing the error. I shut down Windows Defender firewall, Avast Antivirus, Melwarebytes and tried again, same error. I restarted the laptop and tried again, same error.

Other that trying one of the other three methods, any thoughts?

Hi branko3184,
I am glad that things are working for you. As you are migrating to a localhost, there may be some problem with the automated migration. I would suggest you to try another plugin special for migration All in one WP migration. It has a good video to guide you for migration. I will try to simplify it.
1. Install this plugin in your live site
2. Go to export and download the exported file
3. Login to your localhost website and install the same plugin there
4. Import the backed up the file and your file should be migrated.
Note:- if you do not change something while exporting your admin user of the test site will be same as your live site.

In case you face some issues with the above method, you will have to migrate files manually.
1. Zip and download following folders Themes, Plugins, and Downloads
2. Unzip and replace it with your localhost folders
3. Log in to phpmyadmin of your live hosting. Export the database as SQL.
4. Login to phpmyadmin of your test website and import the SQL file linked to the WordPress database.
5. Change the site url directly in the database. ex.https://localhost/tag or anything
It should get migrated.
Reference:- To migrate website manually
To change the sitename in database. Search for Changing the URL directly in the database.

Let me know if you face any problem.

Hi Shashi Kumar,
Since I wrote, I have used method 2 from “How do I migrate to a new site location?” as this is where UpdraftPlus said to go. Method 2 was downloading the backup files from Dropbox and importing them into UpdraftPlus on localhost. That all worked fine, then I clicked the Restore button.
Restore took its time and finally indicated that it finished successfully. The localhost/tag disk space grew by some 700MB which is a good indicator, right. Went back to the Dashboard, wasn’t asked to re-login as instructions indicated…
Close examining the wordpress menu’s, the plugins are all there inactive, themes but no users, media or pages.

A little confused now.
There are 6 zip files in total (others, plugins, themes and 3 uploads) . I am not sure now whether the actual database get’s backed up, strange.
I did have a look at Dropbox and it ran out of space with yesterday’s backup so maybe backup did not finish. I have cleaned up Dropbox and re-started the backup and I assume that tomorrow I’ll be able to repeat the process. The UpdraftPlus backup indicates that the database is getting backed up…. so where did it go.
We use S2 Member and none of the settings were brought over either.

Should I persist with the above method or just use your recommendation. If I use your recommendation how do I best get rid of everything that I migrated to ensure its a clean start.

I do thank you for persisting with my issues and this is a great learning experience for me.

Hi branko3184,
I guess your database was not migrated correctly. That’s why you are not seeing activated themes or plugins. If you are facing issues with the Dropbox backup, you can change the method of work. I would suggest you give All in One WP migration a shot. You need not worry about already imported files. The plugin will take care of all your files and folders.
Good Luck

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by Shashi Kumar.

Hi Shashi Kumar,
To make sure that last nights backup to Dropbox worked I persisted with the UpdraftPlus second option by uploading the backup files and restoring them. It worked and all data is there this time.

Thank you for all your help.