rabra

I’m glad to say that your directions worked for me. I have a different challenge now:

Objective: copy and backup existing WordPress website to my (Mac) computer to be able to experiment with possible amendments before making any changes to the public website.

So far using Local I have set up a site on the computer – it shows the ‘Hello World’ message and I can access its dashboard – and used Duplicator’s archive and installer.

Problem: I can see mysql and php folders listed on the computer but when I attempt to run the installer script by browsing http:/[mywebsite]/installer.php I get the notification:

‘If you’re seeing this text when browsing to the installer, it means your web server is not set up properly.

Please contact your host and ask them to enable “PHP” processing on your account’

Can you offer guidance pease?

Sorry for the garbled reply which should be:
I did read a good bit of useful information about login problems experienced by WordPress newbies but haven’t been able to resolve my difficulty of not being able to go directly my site using as you suggest when trying with various names and passwords, so I’ve got one or both wrong and can’t arrange a reset email to be sent to me.

I’ve tried using the web designer’s user name and password showing in the wp-users file, without success; same result using the names and passwords that I use to login via PHPMyAdmin and via the file manager link in my Fasthosts control panel.

Your re3plies are appreciated. Given that my site is hosted (by Fasthosts) I’m not proposing to self-host. I have not yet been able to access the site’s dashboard using WordPress for Mac and its not clear to me what software I would need to make changes (eg insert a new image, change some text).