Tomorrow afternoon, Matthew “Spamboy” McGarity will demonstrate how to create local WordPress installations.

You are encouraged to follow along and create one on your own system, if you wish. However, there’s one thing you’ll need to do before tomorrow: install a software package that provides you with PHP and Apache & MySQL servers.

Depending on your computer’s OS, install one of the following easy (and free) options using instructions available on their websites:

The reason you are being asked to do this beforehand is to save time — it takes 15-20 minutes to download and install either package, while Spamboy’s presentation lasts only 30 minutes long. This way, you can hit the ground running!