How to set up Wordpress locally on your Mac OS X

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mac-loves-wordpress.jpg
Image Credit : John Conners

If you are a theme designer, plugin developer for WordPress CMS or a blogger who want to test new themes, plugin before pushing them in the production blog then the best bet is to install WordPress locally on your computer. That will ensure that you’ll be working much faster and will be able to test things quickly.

What are the benefits of setting up WordPress locally -

1. In case things go wrong : While trying things, it’s pretty natural that things may get out of control and that database can get corrupt or anything worse you may not even think of. Because you can test it locally, it puts you in control of the things.

2. Save your valuable time : You can save tremendous amount of time as you don’t have to upload any files through internet connection, which will be slow as compared to working locally.

Lets cook up the recipe of setting WordPress up locally on Mac OS X :

1) Ingredients required for the yummy stuff -

- 1 Cup of local web server like MAMP.
- 1 Cup of latest version of WordPress.
- 1/2 Cup Safari or Firefox.
- 2 table spoon of Mac Love.

Time Required : 10 Min.

2) Preparation of the meal -

- Put MAMP in the utensil : Simply install MAMP on OS X and launch the application and start Apache and MySQL. Then launch Safari or Firefox and open http://localhost:8888/MAMP/

Click on the PHPMyAdmin and create the database. Name it whatever you want, you can call it wordpress.

- Now mix WordPress with Mamp : Simply extract the WordPress to ../mamp/htdocs/wordpress/ and edit the wp-config.php file in your favorite text editor and fill these information -

Username : root
Password : root
Host : localhost:8888
Database : wordpress

3) Add the Mac Love and cook it for 5 minutes -

- Install WordPress : Simply point your favorite browser to http://localhost:8888/wp-admin/install.php and follow the WordPress installation steps.

4) Serve with Coffee -

Now that your yummy dish is prepared and feels tempting, to make it more delicious serve it with Hot Coffee and you’ll have the best time of the day.

8 Responses so far  |  

  1. Aravind Jose T. July 31st, 2008 at 7:52 pm
  2. What a way to write out a tutorial !!
    Absolute Beauty :)

  3. iexist October 12th, 2008 at 6:04 am
  4. Hey, great info, your directions were easy to follow

  5. how to move a local wordpress to live blog? | Blog Design Studio October 20th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
  6. [...] on a macintosh, then you are not out of luck. I’ve already written an article on that – how to install wordpress locally on mac os x and now going back to the old question [...]

  7. Autodactyl November 23rd, 2008 at 10:42 am
  8. Cool. Going to try this out tonight.

  9. rayray February 4th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
  10. Thanks for breaking it down in detail.

  11. AJvK March 7th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
  12. This is great. Tried this about a year and a half ago, but couldn't get it to work back then. This short walkthrough did the trick though.
    One question though: how do make a locally installed WordPress Blog available to other computers in the samen local network? I tried changing localhost in wp-config.php and WP settings to computername.local:8888 or IPaddress:8888 without success – the best luck I've had so far was a text-only view of the main page, but every link failed cause it was sent to localhost…

  13. mayank3825 March 11th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
  14. well that has to do with the local setup of the computer. I guess if you'll give the IP address of your computer to the other network members then they will be able to see the wordpress in that local network. It will happen because your computer now acts as a server. Try that once and see if it works.

  15. AJvK March 11th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
  16. Funny thing is, after a good nights sleep, the darn thing worked. wp-config.php is set to localhost:8888, and the WordPress settings to machinename.local:8888

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