Local installation of WordPress on Mac OS X

I recently redid my WordPress template (comments welcome – already heard from GotAds that I have to up the contrast). Would’ve done it months ago but redoing a template, for me, is a long process of trial, error, flipping the computer the bird, and trying again. And I certainly didn’t want to do that with the copy on my webhosting account. So I tried to set up a local copy of WordPress on my Mac. Which turned out to be no fun at all. Sorting out the various configuration options between Apache and MySQL and PHP looked like more trouble than the template-editing was worth. But it turned out to be relatively easy. Here’s how I did it:

First, get Marc Liyanage’s PHP module for Mac OS X. Many thanks to Marc for this! It’s already set up to work with the version of Apache that comes with OS X, and includes support for MySQL.

Next, go to MySQL’s homepage and download the standard package of MySQL 4.0 for Mac OS X. Again, a nice simple package to install. I recommend also installing the preference pane for MySQL so you can start and stop the server from the Preferences panel.

Now, pop open a Terminal window, make sure MySQL is started, and login with the command:

mysql -u root -p

Now that you’re inside MySQL, create a database for WordPress:

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;

And then give a non-root user permissions to modify it:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO yourusername@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘chooseapassword’

Type ‘exit’ to exit, and the hardest part is done. Just follow the instructions for WordPress’ 5-minute install as you’d normally do, placing the WordPress files in your Sites directory and customizing wp-config.php with the database details you set up above. And there you have it! Local installation of WordPress, suitable for customizing through trial and error without fouling up your live blog…