So you figured out or heard you can play with WordPress
on your computer eh? Well here are some instructions on
how to install MAMP on your Mac (Mac OSX).
1) First, download MAMP from the Mamp website. The free
version will work just fine. You do not need the MAMP
pro version.
2) Second, download the latest WordPress version from
WordPress.org
3) Go the Applications/MAMP/htdocs folder. From here you can
create a directory for your WordPress installation.
Unzip WordPress if it isn't already and move it in its
entirety to the htdocs folder. If you want, you can also rename
the WordPress folder to whatever you want to call this test blog.
I'm going to rename mine "test" for this example.
3) Now launch the MAMP program by clicking the MAMP application
within the Applications/MAMP folder. You should see a screen
like below:
If the lamps next to Apache Server and MySQL server are red then
the servers are not running (pictured above).
You can easily start and stop the servers by pressing the
appropriate button. The lamps will turn green once the servers
are up and running.
Once the servers are started your browser will launch the MAMP
configuration page automatically.
4) From here you can switch to the phpMYAdmin tab along the top
of the interface. We will then create the
database for your WordPress blog.To keep things neat and tidy,
give your database name the same name as the WordPress
folder you just created in the htdocs folder. Leave all settings
as is and then press "create" You should now see a
link to your new database on the left hand side. Make sure to
select that link to your new database then continue to
step 5. By the way, It's a good idea to record the user/password
credentials you are creating, because you are going
to need them later.
5) Now we need to create a database user for your WordPress
install and allow that user privileges to the
database we created. While we are in the configuration for our
test file, navigate to the "Privileges" and create a new user.
Press "Add a new User" Give the user any name you want. Then
select the drop-down list next to "Host" and select "local".
Create a password for the user and enter it in both boxes.
Then in the second box, make sure that "grant all privileges" on
database "test" or whatever database name you chose.
You can now get out of the PHPMyAdmin configuration. But don't
shut down MAMP just yet, you need it running in order to run
WordPress locally on your machine.
6) Now for the fun part of installing WordPress. Navigate
to http://localhost:8888/YOURFOLDERNAME/ in your
browser. Install WordPress as usual.
When you get to the database connection details
enter the PHP MyAdmin database name, username, password and leave the rest
the same. You have the option to change the "Table Prefix." I
recommend it if you want to try playing with multi-site.
8) Enjoy WordPress installed locally on your PC!
Note that each time you want to view/tinker with the WordPress
installation it will be necessary to launch MAMP and start the
servers. Then navigate to:
http://localhost:8888/Yourfoldername in your browser and use
WordPress as usual.
