How To Install Wordpress Locally Through MAMP

Written by: Nicholas • Edited by: Michele McDonough
Published Oct 15, 2009 • Related Guides: Wordpress | Mac Computers | .zip File

For anyone looking to install a local copy of Wordpress onto their computers, MAMP is a great solution. For Wordpress, MAMP mimics a live web server completely on your machine, so all functionality that you would get from a live host is still there. MAMP is for Mac computers only.

Get MAMP

The first step to installing Wordpress locally is to download MAMP. MAMP comes in two versions, MAMP and MAMP Pro. MAMP is a completely free version and is more than enough to handle Wordpress. You can download MAMP here. The download is a 163MB zip file; so it may take a while to download, depending on your internet connection. Also, you should not have to download any applications to unzip the file as Mac computers have Archive Utility built-in to OS X.

Once unzipped, simply drag the MAMP folder into your applications folder.

Get Wordpress

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Now that you have MAMP ready to go, you will need to download Wordpress. Wordpress is always coming out with new releases so make sure that you obtain the newest copy. Currently, you will need to get Wordpress 2.8.4. You can download that here. Wordpress is only a 2.4MB zip file, so it should take little to no time at all to download. You can also use the built-in Archive Utility to unzip the Wordpress file as well.

Install MAMP Into Wordpress

Installing Wordpress into MAMP is very easy. To start, open the Finder and navigate: Finder - Applications - MAMP - htdocs. Now, take the Wordpress file that you just downloaded, and drag it into this htdocs folder. That's all there is to it. Wordpress is now installed and ready to go.

Setup My SQL

http://mangoeni.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/controllcenter_mamp_en.jpg

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Now that Wordpress is usable to MAMP, it will need to be setup. Start by launching the actual MAMP application. This will be located at: Finder - Applications - MAMP - MAMP (the round elephant icon). Go ahead and drag this icon into the dock for future convenience. Upon launching MAMP, two windows will appear on your screen. One will be a control panel to toggle your local server on and off. The other will be a Safari window, displaying your MAMP settings.

Within the Safari window, click on the phpMyAdmin tab located on the top toolbar. You should now be on a screen that says "Welcome to phpMyAdmin. Within this window, there will be two sections, My SQL and PHP.

Under the My SQL section, there will be a type enabled line to "Create a New Database". Type "wordpress" into this line. Leave the drop down menu set on "Collation" and click the Create button.

Access Wordpress

You are now on the last step of this tutorial! Open up a new Safari window and type: http://localhost:8888/ into the URL bar. Hit enter to navigate to this page. You should see your Wordpress folder in this window. Click it. This will run the Wordpress auto-installer. Throughout the install process, you will need to enter some settings for your site. Use these settings:

database name: wordpress

database host/server: localhost

database user: root

database password: root

That's all there is to it. You should now have Wordpress installed locally on your computer.