Help Installing SMF on LocalHost

[Ahr Aitch]

First some context:  I created and admin'd a website many years ago that had an SMF forum attached.  It's been more than 10 years since that site expired.  I've slept more than twice since then . . .   and I've passed by 83rd birthday; so I'm a bit rusty.     I now have a new website for which development continues.  At the moment there is no backend; users can only navigate and view content.  I want to add a forum for their use.  It will always be very small.

I have MSSQL and Xampp installed.  I've created a database in MSSQL for the forum (but can easily create it anew if need be).  I'm not proficient with the tools, but I can struggle my way around with the help of forums and AI.  My HTML and CSS are - at the very best - fair.  I can manage to FTP and am learning VS Code daily.

Before even attempting to add an SMF forum to my hosted website, I thought I should install it locally first and get over the steepest parts of the learning curve where I can only damage my own system.  But, I need help.  I'm looking for a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to install SMF locally.  Once installed I will, no doubt, need help making it work as I wish.  I hope that some of the knowledge will come back to me as I go along; but, if not, I can learn again albeit more slowly than I did 60 years ago.

So, my question is:  Can anyone point me to any articles, videos, or how-to's that will show me how to get a local-only SMF forum up and running?

PS:  I posted here in Chit Chat because I was unsure which board to post my question to.  Please give me a polite shove in the right direction if I'm off base.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

https://download.simplemachines.org/requirements.php
https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Installing

Basically, installing is the same locally as it is on a webhost.
Extract the install package to your webroot, and run the installer.
Locally, you should probably just use localhost or 127.0.0.1 instead of a domain name.

[Illori]

also SMF does not support mssql.

[Ahr Aitch]

This issue is resolved but there is no button to mark as solved.

[Irisado]

This issue is resolved but there is no button to mark as solved.

There is no such button in Chit Chat, but there is in Support, so I've moved this topic and marked it as solved for you.