WordPress on my local machine seems unaware of where PHP is installed

@patwill – Although I would think more context is needed to help troubleshoot the issues you are seeing locally I might also suggest looking to using an application that specializes in creating local/development instances on one’s computer such as MAMP, WAMP, Local by Flywheel, InstantWP, etc. (a quick but no where near exhaustive list that came to mind).

If you are already using one of these programs and this problem is persisting I would suggest contacting the specific author’s support team for additional assistance in setting up the application.

~ Cais.

I recommend local by flywheel. After one large download, it’s just a couple of clicks to set up a WordPress site.

https://tomcat.apache.org/
https://httpd.apache.org/

The application in the first URL is for Java, not PHP. You want the application in the second URL. Since you’re running Windows, you can find the latest version of Apache httpd here:

https://www.apachelounge.com/download/

After installing it, you’ll need to set up its configuration. That’s where you tell Apache where WordPress is located and to use PHP to execute .php files.

You didn’t mention it, but PHP for Windows can be downloaded from here:

https://windows.php.net/download/

WordPress recommends the PHP 7.2 branch, but I’ve found that it still has some issues which need to be resolved. So for the time being, it’s best to use the latest version in the 7.1 branch. Its security is identical to the 7.2 branch.

You also need MySQL or MariaDB, and I suggest MariaDB. I’m aware that WordPress suggests MariaDB 10.1 or later (see last paragraph), but those versions are hugely bloated compared to the 5.5 version, and they offer little in the way of new features and nothing in the way of additional security. So I suggest the latest version in the 5.5 branch, which is evailable here:

https://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/5.5.60/

Select the MSI package for your system (x86 or x86_64).

WordPress makde a recent (and surprisingly short-sighted) decision to use a DB schema that creates backwards-incompatible SQL dumps. If you have any plans to use your localhost system to load SQL dumps from other/client sites, then you will be forced to use MariaDB 10.1 or later.

Hi Guys,
Thanks for all of your input.

The problem appears to have been with using MySQL 8 (or one might say that the WordPress 5 minute install doesn’t know about encrypted passwords). I don’t know a lot myself. The recommended (default) password authentication for MySQL 8 uses SHA256. What I had to do for Famous 5 Minute install to work is reinstall MySQL 8 and change the authentication to MySQL 5 compatible.

Having said that, now I’m stuck at wp-admin/install.php?step=2.

Is there something I can edit in wp-config.php so that WordPress uses the SHA encryption on the password to MySQL?

Last week I installed MySQL8 on a test VPS to see what it offered. I removed it a few days later…there were far too many bugs and backward-incompatible changes, even for testing purposes. I’ll try it again in about a year. ??

As for your question, if you want to try using SHA256, I suppose you can do something like:

define('DB_PASSWORD', hash('sha256', 'your_db_password'));

and see if it works.