Written by Admin on 2025-05-06

How to Download WordPress Locally

WordPress is an open-source content management system used by millions of website owners worldwide. Most often, you’ll access WordPress from a web host, but sometimes it's necessary to download it locally on your computer. You can use this development environment to test new WordPress themes and plugins, develop custom WordPress code, or simply experiment with the platform.

Here, we'll walk you through the process of downloading WordPress locally on your computer.

What You’ll Need

Before we get started, you’ll need to have the following:

• A local development environment such as XAMPP, MAMP or WampServer installed on your computer.
• A modern web browser like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

Step 1: Download WordPress

First, head to the official WordPress website and click the "Download WordPress" button located on the homepage. Save the .zip file to your local computer in a directory that's easily accessible.

Step 2: Extract the files

Once the WordPress .zip file has been downloaded to your computer, extract the files from the .zip file. You can do this by right-clicking on the file and selecting "Extract All" or by using a file extraction program like 7-Zip.

Step 3: Place the WordPress directory

Now that you have the extracted WordPress directory, you’ll need to move it to your local web server’s htdocs directory. To find this directory, navigate to the folder where you installed your local development environment and locate the htdocs folder. This is where you’ll place the extracted WordPress directory.

Step 4: Create a Database

WordPress requires a database to function properly. To create one, navigate to your local development environment dashboard, select the database section, and then create a new database and user. Be sure to note down the database name, user, and password details as you’ll need them later.

Step 5: Install WordPress

Once the WordPress directory is in the htdocs folder and the database is created, you can install WordPress locally. To begin, open your web browser and navigate to the WordPress directory on your local web server (usually by typing "localhost/wordpress" in the address bar).

This will launch the WordPress installation process. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation, providing your database details when prompted.

And that’s it! You’ve successfully downloaded WordPress locally on your computer and installed it. You can now use your local WordPress development environment to customize your website theme, edit the code, and add new plugins and functions. Bonus: since this is a local implementation of WordPress, you can do all that testing without your changes being public on the internet!