Setting up a Test Environment

xampp
https://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/xampp/

Local install on OS X – https://maczealots.com/tutorials/wordpress/

Along with the “run a local test site” philosophy (which I adhere to in spades), an easy way of playing with templates in 1.5 is to set things up under a new theme, then use Ryan Boren’s Theme Switcher or Preview Theme plugins.

thanks very much, guys.

I asked a similar question a few days ago and one person suggested that a separate install not only allows you to experiment with themes, but also with plugins.

Why not. A separate install only takes *5 minutes*. More importantly you have a test platform for WP upgrades / patches.

Podz, thanks so much for that link.

A few questions:

1. I set up XAMPP and was able to open my index.php. I see the content of the blog there, but it doesn’t seem to be using the stylesheet to display the content–in contrast to what the directions say, it doesn’t look like my online version of WP. Do you know what I’m missing?

2. Is there any danger, on my own machine, of setting the user to root with no password?

thanks in advance for your help.

2: None that I know of

1. When you see the unstyled blog, View Source and see what the path to the CSS is ?

thanks, podz.

I looked at the source, and the link to the css is

https://127.0.0.1/wp-content/themes/default/style.css

instead of

https://127.0.0.1/blog/wp-content/themes/default/style.css

where would I go to change that?

every single link on the page is like that (ie., the archives/permalinks don’t work either; neither does https://127.0.0.1/blog/wp-admin/post.php

sorry to be such a dunce. thanks for the help.

I would open the database using phpmyadmin and check the site_url and home values.

that was simple. thanks for the help, podz–I’m good to go now.

XAMPP is awesome!!!!!! so happy to have this resource.