Let's imagine this situation. When you installed Joomla for your website, you used the latest stable version of Joomla (in example 1.5.9). You developed your website and you are happy with it. However, in just a few months, several new versions of Joomla are released. The current version is, in example 1.5.14, so your website doesn't have the latest Joomla anymore.
In the previous chapter, you have installed the Apache web server enabled with PHP and MySQL on your local computer. You don't need the web hosting account to test Joomla anymore. Now, you can install Joomla and run it locally. In this chapter, we will explain how to install Joomla, step by step.
In the first chapter of our series of Joomla tutorials, we will cover the installation of a web server software on your local computer. To run Joomla, we need a web server enabled with PHP and MySQL database. Most of you have the PC computers with Windows XP or Vista. Therefore, with your operating system alone, you don't have what's necessary to run Joomla locally.