Introducing MAMP
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 12:17PM | Print Article If you do any type of web design you will know that the ability to test websites locally can be very useful. It allows you to test new pages or configurations without impacting your production websites as well as continue working even if you don’t have access to the Internet.
Mac OS X by default ships with a version of Apache (basic web server), however this can often be restrictive and requires a fair amount of additional configuration to enable dynamic websites, with server-side scripting such as PHP and MySQL. Luckily there is a simpler way thanks to MAMP.
MAMP stands for Macintosh, Apache, MySQL and PHP. It is a lightweight, user-friendly application that automatically sets up and configures all the required elements to host dynamic websites locally (via PHP and MySQL). Best of all the “Basic” application is available for free and already has full support for Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
MAMP is very easy to install and does not modify any of the built in Mac OS X server files, meaning it can also be safely uninstalled. Once installed the application offers a simple user interface showing the status of your servers.
From the main interface you have access to two main options. Firstly "Open start page" which provides additional information about your servers and the basic settings required for connecting to your local MySQL database.
The second option is "Preferences" which allows you to change your start-up/shutdown options, configure PHP and specify your document root.
Finally MySQL (or SQLite) are managed by either phpMyAdmin or SQLiteManager. Both administrator portals are very powerful and are widely used by hosting companies, therefore you are probably already familiar with at least one of the two products. Personally I use phpMyAdmin.
To checkout MAMP for yourself download it for free from www.mamp.info.