This is very useful and if you make a mess of the site, you can simply select a snapshot to put everything back as it was when the snapshot was created. Take creates a snapshot of the current state of the WordPress site. They are not needed right now, but the Take and Clone buttons in the toolbar are very useful. The bitnami-wordpress virtual machine in VirtualBox is ready to start You just have to download an app and a file and import the file into the app. It may sound complicated, but it is really quite straightforward and you can get it up and running with little technical knowledge. It is used here to run Linux, which in turn runs WordPress. VirtualBox is an app that enables you to run alternative operating systems in a window on the desktop and it runs on Windows PC, Apple Mac and Linux. Here I look at using VirtualBox and Bitnami WordPress Stack, both of which are free. I have already looked at running WordPress on your computer using DevKinsta, Local and DesktopServer. Familiarising yourself with a theme or plugin, or testing code like HTML, CSS or PHP functions on a test site rather than a real live site is essential. You can test themes and plugins, get to know them, try setting them up and customizing them. One way to do this is to run WordPress on your computer.

Working on live sites should be avoided or at least minimized.

They don’t want to see a site under construction. If this is done on a live website, it can be a bad experience for visitors. You then have to set about removing it and undoing all the changes you made.

Sometimes you try a new theme or plugin and it does not do what you want. It might take a couple of hours to customize everything and visitors may see layout, design and functionality problems while you are working on the site. If you have a website and want a new theme or plugin, it is easy enough to install, but it can be a bad experience for site visitors as you fiddle around with the plugin or theme configuration. Install WordPress on the computer instead of using a live site on the web. How to build WordPress sites, test themes and plugins, and learn web development on your PC or Mac.

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