Murdoch

I’d say we’ve pretty much exhausted this – thanks for your comments – but let me make a couple of points on your post.

You write “WordPress does not run on your computer.” Well, actually, it does. I can run WordPress, as I can any other application including browsers, on a system here without internet or other network connectivity.

The whole point of local web development is to trial and test a site in private before going live and public. And no, I’m not “merely simulating another computer” except in the specialised sense of using a test machine to develop and evaluate how something will look and behave on a final deployed site – and that’s absolutely identical in concept to any application development process.

And there I come back to the initial point. If I use, say, C++ for that development I use a single copy to work on half a dozen different apps. If the development is web based then I might use Dreamweaver, say, and in that case I would again use a single copy to work on maybe half a dozen different site developments, straight out of the box. Indeed, if I chose to code the relevant markup languages by hand I’d again use a single copy of an appropriate text processor, just as I would a single copy of a relevant DBMS to manage the half dozen or so databases I might use. And so on.

Only in the case of WordPress, it seems, is the default approach that of requiring multiple copies to be installed, one for each discrete development. AIUI your own product facilitates what I argue is the proper approach so far as separating engines and data is concerned so it’s clearly quite possible (well, obviously it is, irrespective of that evidence!). Given WordPress’s undoubted competence, power and elegance this seems to me a quite bizarre design approach.

I did earlier see the ServerPress.com reference and noted it for later but hadn’t looked. I’ve now checked out your DesktopServer link and I’ll look into that more thoroughly when I can make some time shortly – however, as you say, it looks very appropriate and as the impression I got from reading the page was that it was all well thought out and described I’m sure I’ll make use of it. (Just reread that – I’m absolutely not being patronising, just stating what seemed to me important, believe me!) Thanks for that.

Picking up on esmi’s point – thanks – I’m surprised to learn of that and it seems an odd approach. After all, if one were developing web pages using Komposer or Dreamweaver or whatever then one would use a single program installation however many target sites were being managed. I’m curious as to why WordPress doesn’t natively take a similar approach (style and relevant content files clearly may be specific to individual sites but as those are data that doesn’t vitiate the sound arguments for separating the two and having a single engine to do the overall work). Intriguing!

Forgive my tagging on to your thread, jamiedefined, but I’m seeking to solve exactly the same problem so I hope anything I ask or say will also be helpful for you.

The sawmap.com link was very helpful, thanks, and I now have three distinct sites under the local parent directory G:\WebDev\ each of which can consistently be accessed using Firefox 8.0 or MSI 6.0. (To test, I simply used three separate, random but vaguely relevant, web pages and saved them as index.htm in each of the three subdirectories.)

However, what I’m not clear about yet is how I use a single WordPress 3.2 installation (at G:\WebDev\xampp\htdocs\wordpress) and a single copy of MYSQL to manage these three (or more) entirely separate installations. I presume that in the case of the DBMS it would be best to set up a separate database for each local web site and although that’s straightforward enough to do I can’t see anything on the WordPress main dashboard that allows switching sites or switching DBs.

Rooting around I’ve come across the WP Multisite mapping tutorial but that seems to be a case of handling internet-based subdomains rather than what I need. In the plugin directory, under the tag multisite, there’s some possible plugins such as the Networks for WP and the WP Multisite Dashboard widget although again these seem peripheral, if I understand their use correctly.

Essentially all I’m trying to do is the equivalent of opening a word processor and using it to create or edit a range of disparate and entirely unconnected documents.

I imagine I’m just missing something obvious and simple but any pointers or other help would be much appreciated.

MM