Installing WordPress Locally

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This section of the handbook contains tutorials that will walk you through the process of installing WordPress locally.

Why do I need a local WordPress install?

If you want to contribute to WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., you need to have a local installLocal Install A local install of WordPress is a way to create a staging environment by installing a LAMP or LEMP stack on your local computer. of WordPress on your computer to break, play with, and develop with. A local WordPress install allows you to create/test patches, find/fix bugs, and help develop/test new features during a release cycle.

There are two steps to installing WordPress on your computer for contributing to core:

  1. Choose and install a local server
  2. Install WordPress trunktrunk A directory in Subversion containing the latest development code in preparation for the next major release cycle. If you are running "trunk", then you are on the latest revision.

If you haven’t installed a local server yet, you’ll need to do that before continuing.

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Zip File, SVN, or Git?

Once you have your local server installed, you can download a zip file of the latest nightly release, check out a copy of WordPress trunk using Subversion (SVN), or install from our GitHub mirror.

Installing the latest nightly release from a zip file will allow you to beta test the code, and contribute bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. reports. However, if you want to contribute patches along with those bug reports, you’ll need to install a version-controlled copy of WordPress trunk.

SVNSVN Subversion, the popular version control system (VCS) by the Apache project, used by WordPress to manage changes to its codebase. and GitGit Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning fast performance. Most modern plugin and theme development is being done with this version control system. https://git-scm.com/. are both version control systems. You’ll become very familiar with them when you are contributing to core.

  • Subversion (SVN) is the official version controlversion control A version control system keeps track of the source code and revisions to the source code. WordPress uses Subversion (SVN) for version control, with Git mirrors for most repositories. system used by the WordPress Project.
  • For those who prefer working with Git, a mirror of the SVN repository is hosted on GitHub. You can make a pull request on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/, but please make sure there is a corresponding Trac ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. open and link your pull request to it.

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