Installing WordPress on a Local Server

In a previous tutorial we went through the process of Setting Up a Local Server Using MAMP for Mac OSX. If you have not setup a local server environment, then please refer to that tutorial before proceeding further. If you have a local server environment already setup, please continue.

Downloading WordPress

WordPress is ridiculously easy to setup. It really does not matter whether or not you are an expert at phpMyAdmin or SQL. This is your opportunity to learn how to install WordPress locally, while giving you a second benefit of having a copy of WordPress that you can break (and thus learn) without any dire consequences.

Let us begin the process. Open up your browser of choice and visit wordpress.org. Download the latest version of wordpress to your desktop.

Once it has finished downloading, we are going to unzip the contents. You will notice that the unzipped folder is labeled “Wordpress”. Let’s rename the folder to “testsite”, or anything of your choosing (make sure to leave out any spaces).

Create a New Database and User in phpMyAdmin

The next step in the processes to create a new MySQL database. In order to do this we need to utilize phpMyAdmin. Switch over to MAMP and open the start page.

Click on the phpMyAdmin tab so we can create a new database.

Under create a new database type “testsite” or enter the name you chose to name your downloaded WordPress folder. Make sure it is a collation database utilizing utf8. Click create to finish setting up the database.

The next step, setting up privileges to the database, only has to be done once. The user you are about to add will have privileges over all the databases you create. Click on the privileges tab at the top and then click add new user.

Enter your user name under Login Information. For this example, I am going use “jimmy.page” as the username. Feel free to enter your name anyway you like. Next, we are going to declare the host as “localhost”. The last thing that needs to be done on this page is to enter a password (make sure to remember it for later). For this example I am going to use “password” as the password. Click “Go” at the bottom of the page.

You will see the create new message dialogue at the top of the screen. Now all we have to do is set the privileges for our newly created user.

As the administrator you will want full privileges. Check all global privileges and hit go. You have successfully created a database and a user with access to that database.

Installing and Configuring WordPress

In the last tutorial, Setting Up a Local Server for Mac OSX, we changed the default document location to the sites folder within your user profile. If you are using a different or the default location used in MAMP, you can progress by remembering to make everything relative to that specific location.

Let’s go back to our downloaded and unarchived WordPress folder and change the name to “testsite”.

The next step in the process is to place that folder in your Sites folder within your user profile.

Once we have the files in place, we need to make some little changes to the wp-config-sample.php file that is the default in WordPress. Navigate to the “testsite” folder and open it. We are looking for the “wp-config-sample.php” file. The first thing we need to do is rename it “wp-config.php”, so just delete the “-sample” from the filename.

Now, let’s open “wp-config.php” and change the MySQL settings to match the MySQL database we setup earlier. I am opening it with Adobe Dreamweaver, but you can open it with any other web software or TextEdit.

Replace the default information with the database name, username and password that was used to create the MySQL database and user in previous steps. Save the file once you have made the changes.

The last step is to open your browser of choice and type in “http://localhost/testsite” (make sure you have MAMP running) and fill in the information for your newly setup WordPress site. If you see an error page, make sure the information your typed in “wp-config.php” is correct.

In the future, if you create a new WordPress site locally, you will only need to create a new database because the user we setup has global privileges.

Setting Up A Local Server for Mac OSX

As a web designer and front-end developer, I am constantly building websites that require PHP, an Apache Server and a MySQL Server. A majority of time I use WordPress, which requires all three processes.

There are also many benefits to developing a website locally. It is amazing how much time is saved when developing and making changes to a website when you do not have to interact with a server via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Developing locally also allows the developer to find errors that might exist without it affecting user experience, which means you have a completed site upon launch that has been tested thoroughly.

Downloading MAMP

MAMP creates a local server environment on Mac OSX by installing PHP, MySQL and Apache right out of the box. If you are familiar enough with using the built-in Apache server, you can skip this step. If you are not going to use MAMP, I recommend using a Virtual Machine because, although the OSX Apache server may seem easy enough, it is doesn’t usually grow as robust as the requirements sometimes needed.

Some of the disadvantages of using the local OSX Apache server:

• If you update the OSX Apache you have to modify system components.
• It works perfectly for simple HTML pages, but if you decide later on to add PHP or MySQL you have to modify pathways in the operating system that can be overwritten by system updates.
• Since you are using your OS, it tends to eat up CPU processes, especially when PHP and MySQL are added to the mix because of extra daemons.

The first thing we need to do is go download MAMP. Download it to your desktop, because we are going to be deleting it later anyway. For now we are going to use the free version, but if it turns out you will be using MAMP a lot, I recommend purchasing MAMP Pro because it offers more features out of the box and is updated more often.

Installing MAMP

Installing MAMP is exactly the same as installing any software, so if you are comfortable with installing Applications, you can skip to the next step.

Unarchive the file once it is downloaded and then mount it by double clicking the file.

Drag the application file to the Applications shortcut folder. This will install MAMP on your system. After the install is complete you can delete all the files on your desktop and unmount the MAMP volume.

Configuring MAMP

Go ahead and launch MAMP from your applications folder. Your web browser will be directed to the “Welcome to MAMP” webpage on startup (you can change whether it opens this page on launch in the future within preferences). You can close the default webpage for now.

The next step is to change the default ports and location of the local web server. Let’s switch over to the application and click the “Preferences” button.

You will notice that the ports configured for Apache and MySQL by default are 8888 and 8889 respectively. We need to change that. Click the “Set to default Apache and MySQL ports” button to change the ports for Apache and MySQL to 80 and 3306 respectively. Doing this allows us to access the local server by hitting http://localhost rather than hitting the server by http://localhost:8888.

Once the port numbers have been changed, you need to change the default location of the server. The default location is set to a htdocs folder within the MAMP application folder.

Let’s change the document root to the sites folder within your user profile. This is the location where you will put the files for you local website. This also ensures that all of the websites we build will not be trashed if MAMP is deleted in the future.

Up and Running

Now, let’s test to see if everything is working correctly. Open the start page.

When the welcome page displays, you should see the statement verifying that MAMP has been installed correctly and is running without errors.

Now we need to test that phpMyAdmin is working correctly. Click on the phpMyAdmin button. Congratulations, you now have a local server environment. Now, have fun and start building websites that can be accessed by http://localhost within any browser on your computer.