First tasks to get the site up and running.
My WordPress website has remained inactive for 6 months so some work was required to bring it back online and allow me to implement the new Theme. I had a fair amount of work to do. Update Wampserver (Running Apache WS, MySQL or MariaDB), update PHP, check site health, install latest version of PhpMyAdmin.
- Download and install Theme pack. Unzipped theme pack to my local machine at wp-content/themes/ In this case this folder is in my Wamp64/www directory. I couldn’t install the new theme until I updated WordPress. Go to tools/health check and review the notes/detail tab, and then check the Server health check. Mine was telling me that my PHP version was no longer valid and needed updating.
- Before I could update PHP I had to update VisualC++ and then update Wampserver.
- Start Wampserver. Version 3.3.6 64bit from https://wampserver.aviatechno.net/ this will also install the latest version of PHP, some sites wont work, indeed, WP may not function without it. You may not see your theme in WP when you copy/unpack the files. Update PHP and chose the latest version of PHP in the versions list in the admin panel.
- PHPMyAdmin was installed. Download the pack from https://www.phpmyadmin.net/downloads/ . It is installed with Wampserver or what ever server you use but if one updates the server package then PHPMyAdmin will already exist, meaning that you have to update it separately and copy in the original config file, so don’t delete the PHP folder, just rename it, the rename the latest version removing the language from the title.
- I also had to add some plugins, and remove inactive and unwanted Themes.
- The new theme is now activated.
Now to customize my site.
A note. I download my new WP Theme as a Zip file, I was unable to install the Theme from the Import option within WP so I unzipped the folder into a new folder within the Theme directory.
Earlier on in the year I had installed several WP websites onto my machine, each an individual Website using Wampserver.
I also worked with Bitnami and XAMP.