For a very long time now, I’ve been using XAMPP
to develop WordPress
and Joomla sites locally on my laptop. Unfortunately, I traveled last week without my laptop – and I needed to test the latest WordPress 4.0 locally before upgrading my live WordPress blog. The Netbook I carried along with me has no XAMPP installed on it.
Knowing how tedious it can be to install and configure the likes of XAMP, WAMP etc on my netbook, I decided to search for a portable solution and stumbled on Instant WordPress . I tried it, worked fine for me and decided to share it with you.
Instant WordPress is a complete standalone, portable WordPress development environment that turns any Windows machine into a WordPress development server and can even run from a USB key.
Instant WordPress wraps an entire web server into a simple to use interface so that you can start, stop and use WordPress very easily within a folder. It can be installed as many times as you wish on the same PC and can be deleted by simply removing the folder that it is running from. Nothing is left on your machine once deleted.
It comes complete with it’s own built in Apache web server, PHP and MySQL installations that are started and stopped automatically. It also comes complete with a set of dummy WordPress posts and pages so that you do not have to create any data or posts to test themes and plugins.
With the help of the free WordPress duplicator plugin , you can even move a website from Instant WordPress to a web server on the internet. You can also use the same plugin to clone a live site for testing locally in Instant WordPress.
Although, Multisite is not supported, you can install IWP it as many times as needed. You can even use different installations for different projects. All you just need to do is to rename the Instant WordPress folders.
You can use Instant WordPress in multiple ways and these can be broken down into seven main types. There may be others, but these are the most common uses I have found :
- WordPress Development
- Site Testing
- Rolling Out Multiple WordPress Websites
- Soliciting Client Feedback
- Exhibitions and Presentations
- Client Sandbox Training
- Courses and Coaching
How To Download Instant WordPress
You can download latest Instant WordPress here .
After downloading the set up file, install it and this will put IWP folder on your desktop or in any folder you run the installation file.
How To Use Instant WordPress
Open the folder and click on the “InstantWP” icon to start the application. This will launch an interface similar to the screenshot below:
You can click on the tabs to access the plugin folder, themes folder etc. You can as well copy the localhost URL, paste it in the address bar of any browser of your choice if you don’t want to work with the Instant WordPress default Internet Explorer browser.
The documentation at Instant WordPress blog will guide you more on how to use the application. You can find answers to frequently asked questions about IWP at the site too.
If you don’t know how to use the duplicator plugin to move and clone sites with InstantWP, you might have to buy and download instant wordpress unleashed pdf . It explains all.
NB : To log in to the Instant WordPress admin area, use ‘ admin ’ and ‘ password ’. That is the default IWP login.
Are you using IWP? What do you have to say about this application ?
Recommended : EasyWPGuide: Free Online Guide For WordPress Users
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