What is WAMP (Beginners Friendly Guide)

WAMP is an acronym that stands for Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. It’s a software stack which means installing WAMP installs Apache, MySQL, and PHP on your operating system (Windows in the case of WAMP). Even though you can install them separately, they are usually bundled up, and for a good reason too.

What’s good to know is that WAMP derives from LAMP (the L stands for Linux). The only difference between these two is that WAMP is used for Windows, while LAMP – for Linux based operating systems.

Let’s quickly go over what each letter represents:

1. “W” stands for Windows, there’s also LAMP (for Linux) and MAMP (for Mac).
2. “A” stands for Apache. Apache is the server software that is responsible for serving web pages. When you request a page to be seen by you, Apache grants your request over HTTP and shows you the site.
3. “M” stands for MySQL. MySQL’s job is to be the database management system for your server. It stores all of the relevant information like your site’s content, user profiles, etc.
4. “P” stands for PHP. It’s the programming language that was used to write WordPress. It acts like glue for this whole software stack. PHP is running in conjunction with Apache and communicating with MySQL.

Instead of installing and testing WordPress on your hosting account, you can do it on your personal computer (localhost).

WAMP acts like a virtual server on your computer. It allows you to test all WordPress features without any consequences since it’s localized on your machine and is not connected to the web.

First of all, this means that you don’t need to wait until files are uploaded to your site, and secondly – this makes creating backups much easier.

WAMP speeds up the work process for both developers and theme designers alike. What is more, you also get the benefit of playing around with your site to your heart’s content.

However, to actually make the website go live, you need to get some form of hosting service and a Domain. See our beginner-friendly article about web hosting for more information.

In essence, WAMP is used as a safe space to work on your website, without needing to actually host it online.

WAMP also has a control panel. Once you install the software package, all of the services mentioned above (excluding the operating system that is) will be installed on your local machine.

Whether you use WAMP or software packages for the other operating systems, it’s a great way to save time. You won’t have to upload files to a site and will be able to learn how to develop in a safe and care-free environment.

You can download WAMP here.