It is certainly possible to “build a website” using webserver software on your own computer, the easiest way to do this is to install one of the packaged webservers that provide Webserver + PHP + mySQL in a single installation, these go by the names of LAMP / WAMP / MAMP / XAMP etc, one such suite is available from: http://www.ampps.com/
Once you have built your website it is highly advised that you use a web hosting service to make it accessible on the net, it is possible though not advisable to make your localhosted website accessible from the net.
ahh k cool i just youtubed it and got onto wamp.
hopefully tomorrow i can get my site from my mate and build it thru local host first. issue i have is when plugins fail he cant get to site for weeks, so atleast if its local if plugin fails i can undo process.
last question can you ad multiple sites for the local host?
thanks heaps
Yes you can run multiple sites on local host, DO NOT use “multi-site”, rather use the “VirtualHost” technique, details here:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/name-based.html
And add the website names to your hosts file, details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_%28file%29
Using this technique you will be able to bring up your present test site without changing anything except your “wp-config.php” file for the database settings. You can keep the website name the same.
