Building a Webcomic with Wordpress Part 1 - A Sandbox Server and Installing Wordpress

My goal is to create a series of posts that works through the various steps in creating a webcomic using wordpress as a base.  You're going to need to start at the beginning with this one, and this implies a certain familiarity with html and css, but I'll try to explain what I can, and link to tutorials and the like when I can't.

As a note, I'm using Windows, so Mac users may need to acquire different software for some of the stages.

The information in this post can also be found at wpbeginner.com, but could be a little bit confusing.  Hopefully this will clarify some issues, but I encourage you to read their site as well.

Step 1 - a virtual server

Before you want to spend a bunch of money on hosting, you'll want to create your own testing location where you can try out different versions, making sure you iron out all the kinks in the beginning.  This means you're going to want a virtual server running on your personal computer, which means you want WAMP.



ALERT:  Before you install WAMP you will have to install the libraries that allow it to run.  If you do not have these libraries, you'll see this popup when installing:

The MSVCR110.dll is a component of Microsoft's Visual C++ Redistributables.  And unfortunately, most online sources agree that you'll need to install them all just to make sure that everything works as intended.  

Here are the packages you need if you have a 32 bit processor (and it's best to get them if you have a 64 bit processor as well.)

Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)

Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)

Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable  Package (x86)

Here are the packages you need if you have a 64 bit processor

Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64)

Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64)

Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64)


Last, you want the redistributable for 2012, which can be found here (and includes both x86 and x64 versions):

Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4

Okay.  So you got these installed, and now finally you install WAMP.  It will ask you which browser you use, defaulting to explorer.exe.  You can leave this or let it choose Firefox or Chrome (all of which you should have if you want to make sure your website is compatible with most browsers).

It will also ask you to specify the localhost and email, which you can leave as the default options.

Step 2 - Installing Wordpress

Next, you want to install wordpress.  Go to wordpress.org and download the newest version, a zip file containing a single folder called "wordpress".  Unzip this file into the site folder that WAMP sets up.  by default, it will look like this:

Now make sure your WAMP server is online.  If any components are offline, you'll run into issues.  To do this, get WAMP running in your services bar, down in the bottom right corner of your screen.  Either it will appear in the bar itself, or in the little popup arrow, as it does in mine:

Click on the WAMP icon to show the above list of options, and click the options to "Start All Services," and the option to "Put Online"

Next, click the "phpMyAdmin" option, to open up a browser window with available databases.  As your website is going to require a database, you'll want to set one up before getting to work.  When you open the browser window, you'll see this image:

In the upper left hand corner, click the "New" button, to add a new database.  I named mine wordpress_db and left everything else unmodified.

Now go to your browser and type in http://localhost/wordpress (that's the name of whatever that folder is named in C:/wamp/www - by default it's wordpress, but you could change it to something else if you'd like.)

The following window should pop up.

Select your language then click through the next screen:

To reach this screen:

Type in the name of your database (in my case wordpress_db) and the name of your user, (which in my case I left as root - a bad habit, and not something you want to leave in your live version).  Submitting this leads to this screen:

Here you can input some basic information, such as the name of your site, and your login that will allow you to administer it, make posts, check stats, etc.

Fill this out and you're done!

You'll be greeted by the login screen:

And you'll be ready to start working on your website:

That's it for this post, in the next post we'll discuss installing plugins and using child themes in Wordpress.