Art Attack Central

Fixing stuff, myself included…

Setting-up Development Environment

I’ve just finished (once again=almost a year later) setting up Apache, PHP, MySQL and WordPress on my intelMac. If I’d thought more about it before setting up on the intelMac, I would have set up on the PPC MDD Mac.

How come?

I guess because, I’m a nervous Nell when it comes to my PC=Mac. In some ways it’s own environment seems fragile. It makes me queasy when I have to use the -f boot arg., and even more sick when she boots and has no dock and menu. However, mostly she’s pretty good, and when she’s terrible I use the OSx86 tools to fix the permissions. I do wonder if I might be better off with the voodoo kernel, but that’s another story…

What’s entailed with getting the development environment up and running?

Since it’s been so long ago, of course I’d forgotten some of the details.

  1. PHP is already installed so that’s a matter of finding the Apache2 directory (found in /etc), opening the httpd.conf file in terminal as sudo (root) and removing the # (comment) in front of “LoadModule php5_module.”
  2. Apache obviously is already installed (see #1 above). It needs to be turned on and can be turned on via Preferences/Sharing/Web Sharing. Apache can also be turned on and off in the terminal = “sudo apachectl graceful.”
  3. MySQL is a PITA!, and I spent 6 hrs. trying to install the latest binary and/or source MSQL. Finally I “compiled” a variety of internet information sources/URLs that allowed me to install the plain old dmg file without problems. When I say, “without problems” I mean without significant problems.

So what happened with the MySQL install?

To begin with the start/stop preference pane doesn’t work in Leopard. So MySQL must be started via the terminal. Also PHP “thinks” MySQL is installed in a different directory so a sym link must be created, or the php.ini file must be edited. I chose the sym link method.

Where’s WordPress in this geeky menagerie?

Ah yes, WordPress “the 7th day” of open source CMS in the mess. Once everything else (PHP, Apache, MySQL), is working download the latest WordPress and let the fun begin. Extract the files in /Library/WebServer/Documents. In the brower call up http://localhost/wordpress (or whatever you want to name the folder the files reside in) wp-admin/install.php. If all has been done correctly you should be able to install WordPress.

Well… was it all working?

All is working; so now I can begin figuring out how WordPress can/is being used as a CMS. It seems WordPress is PHP, but not really > See this: Matt’s Explaination. I decided not to go with the virtual hosts, and multi blogs on one WordPress install this time, because last year I got sidetracked trying to make that work perfectly before entering the CMS realm.