How to install WordPress on OSX 10.5 Leopard the Easy Way
WordPress on your Mac, great for testing and tinkering and you could even use it to publish to the world (but i think there are better ways to do that!)
WordPress requires Apache (web server), Mysql(database) and PHP (script language) to run, on OSX 10.5 you get Apache and PHP but not mysql and PHP is off by default, you can download mysql for OSX and also switch PHP on but you will need to tinker in the command line and a couple of configuration files, now who wants to do all that when you can do it the easy way. I didn’t even mention phpMyAdmin yet which is used to manage mysql and php in a browser environment which you will need if you are not too savvy in a shell.
MAMP is the answer, its an application that has all of the above in a point and click set up and its free well there is a pro version that allows some extra balloons and whistles.
First up you will need to download and install MAMP from here
http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html just use the regular app to start with.
Copy the application to your Applications folder and double click it. You will get a few prompts to launch the MAMP PRO app just go with the regular one for now.
When the application launches it also opens a browser window with tabs to configure phpMyAdmin and SQLiteManager, no need to worry about SQLiteManager, the window also has tabs for info status on php and a start tab. This “Start” page or tab can be opened from the main MAMP application from the “Open start page” button. For now go back to the main MAMP window application.
You need to first set up the document root, the folder where your webserver will serve your files, for a user in OSX this would typically be the Sites folder in your User folder, this is set by clicking Prefences > Apache > Document Root. Next I would recommend changing the Ports in the Ports Tab to the default Apache and MySQL ports 80 and 3306 one of the cons of this is that you will need to enter your admin password each time you start and stop the servers, if you leave it to the MAMP port defaults no password is required but the flipside of that is that your web site is served up with a 8888 on the end; http://localhost:8888, my preference is to stick with the 80, el natural.
MAMP then clicks and whirs and u should get 2 green lights for both your mysap and apache indicating hey are ok.
With your root and ports sorted its time to create the MySQL database, not too much a daunting task. Click on the OPen Start Page from the main MAMP app, then in the browser switch to the phpMyAdmin tab and type in “wordpress’ under the “create new database tab and click create.
Next you need to download WordPRess – latest version here http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
Downlaod and Unzip wordpress and copy content of wordpress directory into /Users/you/Sites (your document root!).
NOw we are ready to configure WordPRess – from your browser go to http://localhost/, if you get the “Your website here OSX” default page, go to your document root and trash the index.html file then refresh your broswer and you sill see WOrdPress create a configuration file, click on this and another page and then enter the following:
database name: wordpress
database user: root
database password: root
database host/server: localhost
Table Prefix: wp_
All right sparky – Run the install…
And hopefully for you; voila! you get your not too easy to remember password, make a mental note and log in change the password to something a bit more friendly now you are up and running with WordPress on your Mac and your URL is http://localhost/
How to install WordPress on OSX 10.5 Leopard the easy way, which means not taking a visit to the terminal.
Why, WordPress on your Mac OS X?, great for testing and tinkering and you could even use it to publish your blog to the world (but i think there are better ways to do that!).
WordPress requires Apache (web server), MySQL (database) and PHP (scripting language) to run, with an OS X 10.5 installation you get Apache and PHP but not MySQL and PHP is off by default, you can download MySQL for OS X and also switch PHP on but you will need to tinker in the command line and edit a couple of configuration files, now who wants to do all that when you can do it the easy way. I didn’t even mention phpMyAdmin yet which is used to manage MySQL in a browser environment which you will need if you are not too savvy in a shell. Read the rest of this entry »
