It took me a while, but finally after around 18 hours of “blood, sweat and tears” I managed to install WordPress locally using my own computer as server.
The package where I eventually managed to do it with is called Nginx (pronounce as Engine X).
But the BIG THANK YOU goes to Hendry Lee over at BlogBuildingU.com for his excellent tutorial Install WordPress on WEMP (Windows, nginx, MySQL and PHP).
Approximately 24 hours ago I started with other packages with a variety of names such as Wamp, Xampp, Xampplite, NetServer, even Lighttpd. I read tutorials, saw instruction videos, browsed through support forums, FAQ sections and the search engines, tweaked config files and settings, added code, deleted code, but with none I was able to execute the last step:
http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php
I still don’t know, nor understand, what exactly went wrong and that will probably remain a mystery forever. Fact of the matter is, that I am finally able to run WordPress locally without having to upload files all the time to see the results of recent tweaks. That will save me a lot of time with website development and building themes!
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Good to know it’s working for you now.