I installed WordPress Locally w/ XAMPP “Lite” Now what…

I installed WordPress Locally w/ XAMPP “Lite” Now what…

OK, So I finally realized how to do it after thumbing through the net.

So here’s what i got going on:

My domain/server/hosting/wordpress/ftp is all installed/stored on a A Website Hosting Company.

I just installed the XAMPP-LITE/MYSQL/PHP/Wordpress thing today LOCALLY on my PC.

I haven’t done anything yet on the “live wordpress site” yet except add in categories, tags, and a test post. Then I realized that doing all the edits online can foul me up especially if I make a ton of modifications really quickly, since wordpress pings each change/save. So I thought also the best approach would be to use the local copy as a ‘test dummy’ and way to ‘practice’, especially with new apps or templates, especially since I have no clue what I am doing in that department yet- (modifying wordpress templates)

So could you guys help me understand what to do now that I have the local thing (dont know the lingo) installed. I can log in to the local address wordpress admin page and make changes, which happily doesnt reflect live, which i know i did it right at least lol. So I wanna build up my blog, get it ‘web-publish ready’ on the local site, and once all my changes are ready to go I want to FTP it over to the server copy of the wordpress files and ‘go live’ … I hope you understand what I mean.

So what is the best method to do so? Do I simply design it all and get it going and then ftp this thing over to my server? I installed the LITE version of XAMPP as it doesn’t have File Zilla built in as I reas that the version with it installed isn’t as safe or something, it creates a generic password/username. I also read that XAMPP isn’t “secure” and is good for people laying out/testing out a site, but not good to design it all in it… So what am I supposed to use it for? Just to test out themes/templates/plugins? If that’s all it’s for I feel like I went through all this for nothing. I thought I was to install it locally so that I could create my blog on my own time without worrying about fouling it up on the “live server” and do whatever I needed to do and be able to see it how it would look and decide if I liked it or not, tweak it, then upload it… Please help me out. Based on my readings, a lot of places are saying there are a lot of security issues with this.

Also, from a security measure I was reading about the string of text in the WP-CONFIG folder:

define(‘AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(‘SECURE_AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(‘LOGGED_IN_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(‘NONCE_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);

Apparently you can customize this by assigning it a self-generated, or wordpress generated LONGGGG keycode, 3 of them in fact, to help prevent hackers, and I think it does some kind of encrypting/scrambling of your “cookies/website data” when viewing your wordpress blog? or maybe it just helps people to not be able to get into your backend/database? I have no clue to be honest… I did set it up thought, 4 different lines of crazy words/numbers/character.. so what exactly does it do?

Also, if someone could elaborate on the syncing of the “live server copy of wordpress blog” and the “local copy of wordpress blog” and how they should interact with each other. which comes first, chicken or the egg… basically i want to do it the most efficiently may possible and not foul something up. should I install/create a BACKUP of the local version? if so how do I do it?

OK So I know I just BABBLED a ton here, I hope you guys can help me out. I’m sure you can “feel” my eagerness in my post to get this thing going! I just need a little guidance/support to help me along the way.

thanks for your upcoming responses.