Pretty simple fun and straight forward!

Download the latest version of WordPress Here.

Move the content of the WordPress folder(You may need to extract the ZIp first) to \xampplite\htdocs.  If you are going to have multiple installs of WordPress it would be a good idea to move all the contents of the WordPress folder to  \xampplite\htdocs\htdocs where site1 is the name of your site.

Now all of the WordPress files are stored in \xampplite\htdocs\nameofyoursite on your flash drive.

We now need to setup WordPress on our portable server.  Open your MySql admin page http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ to create a new database for WordPress.  Navigate to Databases on the top menu.  Enter a name for your database in the “Create new database” box, and click Create.

Select your database from the left side, and click privileges on the top.  now select “Add new user”.

Enter a username and password for the database, change the host to “localhost”, make sure “grant all privalges on ‘yourdatabasename’” is selected, and then click the Go button on the bottom of the page.

Your database is now setup, and you should be ready to finish the WordPress install.

Finishing the WordPress Install

Now, in your browser, navigate to your WordPress directory in localhost http://localhost/wordpress_site1/wp-admin/install.php.  (|Note, your wordpress may be in a different folder than wordpress_site1).  Click Create a Configuration File to continue.

Make sure you have your Database name, username, host and password you created previously, and click “Let’s Go!” on the next page.

Enter your WordPress database name, username, and password, leave the other two entries as default, and click Submit.

You should now have the database all ready to go.  Click “Run the install” to finish installing WordPress.

Enter a title, username, and password for your WordPress install, as well as your email address, and then click “Install WordPress”.

All done!  Now you can create and edit pages, posts, themes, and plugins on a USB stick you can take anywhere.

You can view your site by navigating to http://localhost/wordpress_site1/ in your browser.  (Note the /wordpress_site1/  may be different for you, just navigate to where you installed WordPress)

That’s it!!

You now have a working install of XAMPP Lite and WordPress that you can take with you to any Windows computer.  You can test and tweak pages anywhere you go, and its great for showing to clients, no more uploading to a testing or development server.  Hope it’s as much benefit to you as it is to me!

To really be able to develop for WordPress or another CMS it’s best to have a local web server.  This will save you time in FTPing and editing remote files on your final server.   I used to use WAMP server, although very good, it had some limitations.  I found I was switching between my desktop and laptop, making things unnecessarily complicated.  Than I discovered XAMPP Lite, which I installed on a USB stick, and it works great.  Another simple option is Instant WordPress, I haven`t played around to much, but I think you are much more limited.

Installing XAMPP Lite

Installing XAMPP lite is pretty straight forward, use the link below to use the self extracting EXE file.

Download XAMPP USB Lite 1.7.7 - as an EXE file, Zip and 7zip can be downloaded here.

Launch the Installer, and browse where you want to install XAMPP.

Select the flash drive and directory you wish to use.  You should have at least 400 MB of free space, plus how ever much space you need for your website, and databases.

Click install, all of the files will be extracted to your flash drive.  This may take a few moments depending on your flash drive’s speed.

Click Finish and you are now done!

Launching XAMPP

Launching XAMPP is very easy.  Navigate to the directory on your USB drive and launch xampp-control.exe.

Click Start beside Apache and MySql to get your webserver running.

Please note: Do not check the Svc box, as this will run the server as a Windows service.  To keep XAMPP portable, you do not want it running as a service!

Windows Firewall or your firewall may prompt you that it blocked the server; click Allow access to let your server run.

Open your favorite web browser and type localhost in the address bar.  If everything is working correctly you should see the following in your address bar.   Choose your default language…

You should now see the default XAMPP page.

Click status to see that everything is working.  If it is not try restarting the services.

You are now ready to start building and adding webpages your mobile webserver.  Save all of your web files in the \xampp\htdocs\ folder on your flash drive.

Well that is it for installing XAMPP Lite.  Check back tomorrow for how to setup wordpress in XAMPP Lite.

Complete XAMPP details are available at http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html.

Censorship comes up often when talking about net neutrality, and general issues about the internet.  To put matters simply I am against any form of censorship on the web or else where.  So if you are offended here, either suck it up, or screw you.

That’s all.

This is one of my many blogs, incuding; Winddude.com, WindsurfPress.com, my company site GnarlyInc.com along with several others in development.  I plan to follow the development of these and my other sites here.  Sharing what I learn and and attempting.

This blog will be more than just that.  It will feature my personal portfolio, themes I develop, tutorials (wordpress, photoshop, css, etc) and lots of other things.  Ohh yea, I also plan to have fun with this blog posting things I enjoy, like jokes, automotive and the occasional windsurfing article.

Enjoy and dont forget to follow me.