WordPress is a highly customizable content management system and it is being widely used all over the world. Thousands of users are already using it and a lot of newcomers also want to learn it. But before getting into the real thing and spending money on domains and hosting, newcomers usually want a free alternative. There are many free web hosting services available that let you install and use WordPress but they are slow, display a lot of ads and have other problems. That brings us to local host development, for which there are many environments and tools available. Anyone can use these to test WordPress before launching their first website and not just newcomers, existing developers and users also use these environments to test and use new plugins or to experiment and implement new functionalities before applying these changes on the main website. Developers are reluctant to test new stuff on their client’s site as it could break the whole site, so they test it on local servers beforehand. Lets take a look at some of the most notable options (not in any particular order) available in the market.
1. WampServer
WampServer is a windows based web development environment. It enables users to create web applications using PHP, Apache2 and MySQL database. With phpmyadmin included, you can manage all the databases you create. WordPress can be installed locally using WampServer. WampServer can be downloaded for free from their site but before downloading it you must check whether your operating system is 32-bit or 64-bit. You can then select the installation file accordingly. WampServer is not available for MAC operating system. WampServer is not compatible with older versions of windows like Windows XP, Windows Server 2003. Older versions of WampServer are available on SourceForge.
2. XAMPP
XAMPP stands for Apache, MariaDB, PHP and Perl. In simple English, it means it has all these services for you to use. You can easily install WordPress and use it by configuring XAMPP. XAMPP is available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. There is another version of XAMPP that is XAMPP-VM it is only available for setting up Linux virtual machine on macOS. XAMPP is very popular and it is open source with a forum named “The Apache Friends” which is very useful for finding support related to installation and other problems. After setting up XAMPP you can select which version of PHP you want to run or when to start/pause your Apache server. XAMPP allows user to dive deep and gives access to all services in detail.
3. MAMP
MAMP stands for Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, PHP. It has similar functionality like XAMPP. It uses Mac as the operating system, Apache as the web server, MySQL for databases, and PHP for web server modules. It offers support for other web languages too like Python, Perl and Ruby. It also allows the user to use Nginx. MAMP is available for Mac and Windows. MAMP is free but it also has a pro version which can be purchased on their site and has a starting price of 79$. It is easy to use and one can easily setup WordPress in a matter of few clicks. There are a lot of ads on the free version which are annoying sometimes but there’s always the option of moving towards the paid version. The pro version has installers for different applications which makes it very easy to install packages for example the WordPress installer. You can select which ever version of the services you want to run like the old versions of PHP.
Conclusion
To conclude, it really depends on your operating system and your preferences. All of the above mentioned environments offer great functionalities and services but the one which appeals to you most really matters. Let us know which environment you use or plan to use and which features you like/dislike.
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