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WordPress Local WordPress Development Local WordPress Development Installing WordPress Locally

Dawn Foster
Dawn Foster
1,899 Points

Multiple websites being designed with Wordpress - how to setup with XAMPP on PC.

Since the video didn't go into detail about file structure on a PC install, I want to ask a few questions..

For a single site install of WordPress on a PC, it appears that you extract WordPress files to a folder at this location - C:Program Files/XAMPP/htdocs/localwp/ for example.

But, if you are wanting to have several sites being developed at the same time, how do you create the file structure for PC?

Do you have to install wordpress multiple times - once for each website you are working on? So for site1 and site2, do you have to install WordPress at these two separate locations?: C:Program Files/XAMPP/htdocs/site1wp/
C:Program Files/XAMPP/htdocs/site2wp/

Or is it better/easier to try multi-site settings? Does it make a difference to the file structure and where you install wordpress? Because it appears you only have to install WordPress once in this case? So where would the install be.. and how do you separate the actual themes or websites?

Thanks for your help!

2 Answers

Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,148 Points

If you're going to develop multi wordpress sites at one time, with the intention that these WP sites are going to be stand alone site in the wild, i.e. not multi-sites when on a public server, than I would set it up as you suggested, where inside your htdocs folder you have a folder for each WP site, and inside that folder you put a new installation of WP.

This also means that for each site, you'll need to create a new database, and give that WP's cofig file those database credentials. That will keep everything nice and clean, and it's not too much of a pain to set up.

Zac Gordon
STAFF
Zac Gordon
Treehouse Guest Teacher

Installing them in separate folders is likely best. We do discuss this at some point in the course, although it's not talking to PC file structure specifically, but either Mac or PC.