On the server, my website uses mod-rewrite to structure urls without index.php but after I downloaded the website to my local machine, none of the links work without index.php. I'm using the same files, the same .htaccess and I'm using the same domain in localhost.
Other issue is that the admin login just shows a blank page, no errors. I've enabled errors using this in index.php, and enabled it in php.ini:
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
ini_set('display_startup_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
On localhost may be url rewrite engine is off or either not working. If you don't want index.php in url then you can remove that just go to System > Configuration > General Tab > Web > Search Engines Optimization > Make it YES For adding index.php in url make Search Engines Optimization = NO And for admin if you are using linux then check permissions of the folder. Check console for errors in inspect element.