Running more than one site on localhost.

Moving out of MultiSite as this is not a question about THAT but about running multiple, separate, installs locally.

Answer: Generally yes. I know on MAMP if I put WordPress in multiple locations, I can call them all via localhost.

yes
I have 3 installs at present
localhost/test
localhost/wordpress
localhost/mirror

just follow the same procedure for setting up the other sites except decide if you want separate db’s or one

Hi guys, thank you so much for replying.

Samuel- when you say follow the same procedure- what exactly do you mean?
ie, do i reinstall wordpress on the pc along with xampp? (sorry if this seems like a stupid question ?? )

i dont suppose you could point me towards a tutorial or anything could you? Especially the separate database stuff you mentioned as i havent really got much of a clue about this stuff.

Thanks again guys

Just install WordPress again, not xampp.

yes as stated above
just create another folder and put the wordpress files in there
adjust your wp-config.php to reflect a different db or same one with differing table prefix
run install routine

You can use the free Duplicator plugin in the repository to deploy your site. It is pretty straight forward and I’ve had decent results with it. Actually, I haven’t had any problems with it ??

Usually I use WP DB migrate, and I know there are other premium solutions but my vote is for Duplicator.

Instead of having lots of WordPress installs, I just set up my original one to use MultiSite. https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Create_A_Network.

Just add define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true); to wp-config.php, and follow the instructions found in Tools >> Network Setup to install it.

Absolutely! I have 35 sites on one multisite installation, and about ten more individual sites — some WordPress, some not — all on my local machine. At any given time, you can add or remove sites with ease.

You need two things:

1. create Virtual Directories in your Apache configuration file
2. add or remove entries in your Windows hosts file

Your virtual directories can point to any folder on your system (in general) so each folder can act like a new/different server. Give each virtual directory a servername/alias and then add that name/alias to your hosts file. If this is Greek to you, simply Google virtual hosts and windows hosts file to learn how to do it.

Side note: You don’t have to call them all “localhost”. You can name them however you want, even using the live URL. For example, if I’m building https://www.xyzsite.com, I create a folder in my “Sites” folder (located in My Documents, though I’m on a Mac). Then, I create a virtual host to point to that folder, with an alias of https://www.xyzsite.com. Finally, I update my hosts file to point https://www.xyzsite.com to my local IP address. When I open https://www.xyzsite.com in my browser, it loads up the site/files on my local machine.

When I’m ready to go live, I simply upload the files and database and it’s live — no messing with search and replace, changing URLs in the database or content, etc.

DesktopServer Limited for free at https://serverpress.com/products/desktopserver does all that automatically

But it does inhibit the top-level domain to be just .dev (as in development) in order to not confuse developers and maintain security.