Originally posted by Geeks Are Sexy.

Here is a little guide that will help you install and run WordPress locally on your Windows XP/Vista machine in less then 5 minutes:

1- Get XAMPP lite for Windows. Choose the EXE version, and install it at the root of your C drive.

2- Browse to C:\xampplite and double click setup_xampp.bat

3- Once that is done, double click xampp-control.exe and start the Apache and Mysql services.

4- Open your browser and go to this address: http://localhost/. From the menu on the left column, choose your preferred language.

5- Now that the interface displays a language that you can understand, click on phpMyAdmin (on the left column once again)

6- Enter "wordpress" (without quotes) in the "Create New Database" Field, and select utf8_unicode_ci in the drop down box in the next field (as shown in the picture below). Click on Create. The Xampp setup is now complete.

7- Download WordPress and unzip it under c:\xampplite\htdocs.

8- You should now have a wordpress folder under c:\xampplite\htdocs. Browse to the folder, and you will see a file named wp-config-sample.php. Open it in your favourite text editor and replace the default values by the ones you see under this paragraph. Save the file as wp-config.php (under the same folder).

Download wp-config.php here

9- Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php , follow the instructions, and voila, you are done.

Update: If you already have a web server (IIS, etc.) running on your box while trying to set up XAMPP, be sure to follow the instructions provided here. If you don’t, you won’t be able to access the XAMPP config page as described in step #4.

WordPress 2.3.1 is now available. 2.3.1 is a bug-fix and security release for the 2.3 series.

2.3.1 fixes over twenty bugs. Some of the notable fixes are:

• Tagging support for Windows Live Writer
• Fixes for a login bug that affected those with a Blog Address different than
  their WordPress Address
• Faster taxonomy database queries, especially tag intersection queries
• Link importer fixes

Unfortunately, some security issues were found in 2.3. Janek Vind found an XSS problem that can be exploited if your php setup has register_globals enabled. For this reason, upgrading to 2.3.1 is advised.

The full set of changes between 2.3 and 2.3.1 is available for viewing on trac.

Get 2.3.1 from the download page and enjoy.

Tags: WordPress+2.3.1