Back to: Intro to WordPress
Before we begin, it’s important to note that WordPress is not a regular desktop application like Microsoft Word. It’s not designed to run on a personal computer. Instead, it needs to be installed on a web server in order to work.
That said, if you’re wondering how to install WordPress on your personal computer, there is an easy way to do that. We’ll get to that in a minute.
In this lesson, we’ll show you the two most popular methods for installing WordPress so you can begin building your website right away.
The Two Best Ways to Install WordPress:
- Choose a Managed WordPress host, and they’ll pre-install it for you. Easy!
- Install Local on your personal computer. It’s a local web server plus WordPress, in one app.
1.Choose a Managed WordPress Host
No matter what type of website you’re building, it will need to be hosted on a web server somewhere, so that visitors can access your website. And these days, many hosting companies provide Managed WordPress services, which means they…
- Pre-install the WordPress software for you.
- Keep your WordPress software, plugins, and theme up-to-date.
- Back up your site nightly.
- Monitor your site 24/7 for malware, security breaches, or hacking attempts.
- Fix your site should it ever become compromised due to a security breach.
- Optimize their web servers specifically for hosting WordPress sites.
- Automatically scale to handle spikes in traffic if your site suddenly receives a lot of visitors.
- Provide stellar support from well-trained WordPress experts.
For all these reasons, we highly recommend that you sign up for Managed WordPress hosting from the outset. You’ll be up and running with the latest version of WordPress in just a few minutes.
We recommend you start for FREE with EasyWP.
With EasyWP, you can spin up a new WordPress site in about two minutes, and your first month is FREE! After that, it costs just $4.88 per month. Watch as we create a brand new WordPress site in real-time, in less than two minutes:
Why not take two minutes to spin up your own WordPress website using EasyWP and see just how fast it is for yourself?
Or, view a list of other Managed WordPress hosts we recommend.
2.How to Install WordPress on your Personal Computer with Local
Install WordPress on your own desktop computer with Local.
It’s true that WordPress is not designed to run on a personal computer. Instead, it needs to be installed on a web server in order to work.
But, that’s exactly what Local does. It creates a private web server on your own computer, and then installs WordPress for you. In fact, you can install multiple instances of WordPress, so you can create as many WordPress sites as you want, right on your own computer.
That’s probably why Local has become the top choice for WordPress developers who build website for their clients.
Local makes it a breeze to install WordPress on your Mac, Windows, or Linux PC and develop your entire WordPress site locally. Then, when you’re ready to make it live, you can push your local site to either WPEngine or Flywheel for hosting with just one click within the app.
NOTE: Currently, Local only supports 1-click deployment to WPEngine or Flywheel. It’s possible they will support other Managed WordPress hosts in the future. Of course, you can always manually export and migrate your WordPress site to another host. But that’s a topic for another post. 🙂
Still, if you’re wondering how to install WordPress on your own computer, your best bet is to download and install Local.
Whichever method you choose, you should now have a working installation of WordPress. Ready to move on to the next lesson?
