How To: Create a New WordPress Blog in Mac OS X with MAMP, Part 0

"Zero-zero is a big score." Ron Atkinson

"Part 0? Are we in computer science class or what? We aren't talking about arrays here, are we?"

No, nothing to do with arrays. This article is simply for if you are thinking of creating a new WordPress blog and want to do that on a Mac OS X operating system.

Why Step 0?

A very good question. But, before answering the question, let me ask you one. "Why do you want to create a blog?"

Exactly. You simply want to blog. In other words, you want to write about things you and others may be interested in. Let me go back to the main question. "Why Step 0?" I actually used Step 0 and not Step 1 because once done with this article, you will only have set up your new WordPress blog and didn't start with the actual blogging (writing) process yet, as the blogging issue is a story in its own.

So to make it simple, I just want to discriminate between the process of setting up your new WordPress blog and between blogging itself. Got the idea?

I got the idea, but how?

Here comes the real part. Setting up WordPress on your Mac. Now, in order to set up WordPress, we need first to setup the following:

• Apache
• MySQL
• PHP

"WOW! Seems like a complex process, I really thought it was easier than that!"

It is easy. We will just do all of this with just a few mouse clicks using MAMP.

"MAMP?! What is that supposed to be?"

MAMP is an abbreviation for: Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Exactly what we are looking for
for setting up our new WordPress blog.

Setting up MAMP

Let us get started with the setup process following these steps:

Step 1 Visit MAMP

Go to the MAMP website.

Step 2 Download MAMP

Click the Download now button. In this case, a zipped file (MAMP_MAMP_PRO_1.8.4.dmg.zip) about 156MB of size will start downloading.

Step 3 Open the DMG

Unzip the file and double click the MAMP_MAMP_PRO_1.8.4.dmg file (on my iMac and Safari web
browser, this happens automatically), in which case, a window as shown in the below figure will show up.

Step 4 Agree

Click the Agree button, in which case a window as the one shown in the below figure will appear.

Step 5 Move to applications

Drag MAMP (NOT MAMP PRO 1.8.4) to the Applications folder. CONGRATULATIONS. You now have MAMP installed on your system.

Step 6 Open MAMP

Double click at MAMP.app from /Applications/MAMP/ MAMP.app and choose the Launch MAMP button.

Step 7 Make sure it's green-lighted

If everything went well, the MAMP application window will appear showing that the Apache Server and the MySQL Server have started (green light under status). Look at the below figure.

Also, at the same time, you will have a browser open up with the following URL:

• http://localhost:8888/MAMP/?language=English

Alternatively, you can fire up your preferred browser and enter the following URL:

• http://localhost:8888/MAMP/

Step 8 Check for the welcome message

To make sure that MAMP is installed successfully, you must get the following image as shown at the top of the page.

What you will be seeing at the MAMP homepage is simply a Control panel through which you can
edit anything important.

Step 9 Go to the admin link

Click at the phpMyAdmin link through which we will administer the MYSQL database.

Step 10 Create

Under Create new database, enter the name of the database. Say for example, wordpress, and click the create button, in which case (if everything went fine), you will get a message with a green background as shown in the figure below.

And that's it!