WordPress is a popular web development platform that aims to make it as simple as possible to create and publish your own websites or blogs. Normally, you would have to access the service with the help of a web browser, but the WordPress.com app offers an alternative. It allows you to access your account. Install the Latest Version of WordPress. First download the latest version of WordPress as a zip file.
A desktop app that gives WordPress a permanent home in your taskbar. Download the app: Also available for: Mac OS X (10.9+) Windows (7+) Linux (.tar.gz) Linux (.deb). If, on the other hand, you’re looking to simplify your working life and take control of your day-to-day WordPress development, keep reading. We’re going to cover one of the simplest steps you can take to streamline and professionalize your workflow: setting up a local WordPress installation on your Mac. If you want to install WordPress on Mac OS X, you are always advocated using a local server environment setup tool, such as MAMP or XAMPP. In another guide, we have introduced the free web server package MAMP for Mac with steps to install WordPress on Mac OS X with MAMP.
WordPress is the most effective tool when it comes to building blog communities on the Internet, or landing pages. As a web technology, it offers all kinds of tools and utilities one needs to manage and run a successful web application online.
The fact that WordPress is an open source technology, widely used by webmasters and bloggers worldwide, attracts a lot of web developers and coders which contribute their energy in different tools, mainly useful plugins that add up functionality to the WordPress content management system.
During this first part of the WordPress with Divi setup series, as a computer geek, you will have a fresh WordPress installation on your localhost, completely configured for web development. Let’s progress with the first step, which is the download of WordPress CMS from the official site.
Since WordPress content management system is open source and free as in beer, as an end user you don’t have to pay anything, but to keep the project alive I highly recommend that you do a small donation if that’s possible for you.
First, go to the official website of WordPress and check for the latest software available, like shown in the screenshot published below.
Then click on Download WordPress 4.9.5. Once the installation is finished, it is required that you unzip the downloaded package so you can keep up with this detailed guide.
There is many free tools out there for Mac OS X to unzip .zip packages, the one which I am using daily on my own machine, is named Archive Utility. After having unzipped the WordPress 4.9.5 package, a folder with the complete WordPress files will be available on your computer like shown in the following screenshot.
If everything looks like in the screenshots, the first step of setting up WordPress on your local machine is successfully completed. Let’s continue with the next step.
For one to run WordPress on their localhost machine it is needed specific web development software such as ampps, which offers the local server and many other technologies such as PHP, Apache, Perl, MongoDB and MySQL.
The software can be easily dowloaded completely for free, the same as WordPress CMS. All you have to do is visit this link and choose the right version for your machine, which in our case is ampps for Mac OS X. The following screenshot makes it easier for you when it comes to choosing the right version for your computer, especially if you are a total beginner.
The ampps package for Mac OS X comes as a .dmg file, which can be easily installed on your machine. Once the download is being finished, make sure to right click on the package and then hit Open.
The installer will present you with the following.
Drop and drag AMPPS into Applications and let the installer take care, like shown in the following screenshot.
If everything with the installation goes fine, AMPPS can be easily launched from the Launchpad, but you will probably run into the following security issue.
There is a solution of everything, at least that’s what I do believe with all my soul! Instead what you need to do to open AMPPS, is to locate the app under Applications through Finder. Once you have located it, do a right click and click on Open like shown in the following screenshot.
The system requires your password. Type and it and click OK.
Once finished with success, the following will launch.
It is a gui toolkit which helps one monitor the services offered by AMPPS, is they running or not?
The Apache server is currently running, a simple test like going to localhost on your browser, can prove that.
Now that we are done with the installation of AMPPS on your local machine, it is time to create a fake domain which is going to serve as the url of your local web application.
Make sure to open a new tab in your browser and enter the following url, which links to the AMPPS application.
http://127.0.0.1/ampps/
The following dashboard will come up.
With the main purpose of pointing to your local web application through your web browser, so you can test while developing, it is important that you create a fake domain for your local web application.
To create and add a fake domain in AMPPS, click on Add Domain like shown in the following screenshot.
Once you have clicked on Add Domain, the following will come up.
Under the Domain, one is highly recommended that their name ends in one of the followings:
- .test
- .example
- .invalid
- .localhost
For the purpose of this tutorial, I am going to use wordpress.test, like shown in the following screenshot.
Click on Add Domain and this step is done.
Any database driven web application, needs a database to work. Since WordPress is one, it is a necessity to create a mysql database through phpMyAdmin.
First, access the phpMyAdmin through the following url.
http://localhost/phpmyadmin
If the request is successful, the following will come up.
To create a fresh mysql database, click on New button which is located on the top left side of phpMyAdmin.
Choose a name for your mysql database and click on Create. For the purpose of this tutorial, I chose to name my mysql database wordpress_test.
The setup of database is done!
A quick request on the following url, shows the new fake domain which you added through your AMPPS dashboard.
http://127.0.0.1/
Select all the files being found inside WordPress CMS folder which you did download, and copy them under the following path.
/Applications/AMPPS/www/wordpress.test
The final directory look is shown below.
Once data is being copied, visit localhost through your web browser and then access the local web application via the fake domain which you created, in my case it is the following.
http://127.0.0.1/wordpress.test/
After a successful request on the above url, or in your specific one if different than mine, you will be presented with the following.
The above informs the user about the fact that they need to know their database credentials so wp-config.php file is automatically generated. No need to worry about it, just click on Let’s go!
The following comes up.
Fill the form according to the followings:
Database Name –> wordpress_test
Username–> root
Password–> mysql
Then click on Submit. Once finished, the following comes up which informs you about the installation.
We are almost done. There is a few quick and short steps we need to accomplish before finishing the complete setup of WordPress on your local machine.
Fill the form according to your preferences and then click on Install WordPress.
Everything has been completed, all you have to do to manage your web
application, is to login.
WordPress is the perfect tool when it comes to building land pages or online communities on the Internet, especially for those who don’t like to code much. The next tutorial will cover the setup of Divi WordPress theme, a very practical framework, designed to ease the job of the front end developer.
This is a guide on how to set up Laravel Valet on macOS for a WordPress local development environment. Using Valet as a WordPress local development solution has the main benefits of speed, being lightweight and using fewer configurations to go wrong than say a solution like Vagrant.
There is a 2nd related article that looks at getting WordPress themes, plugins and settings already installed and ready to deploy.
Valet runs only on macOS and runs directly on top of the operating system, not in a virtual container.
The key software components needed are Homebrew; a package manager and Laravel; a PHP framework.
Valet itself has an Nginx, PHP 7.3 and DnsMasq and by default uses the .test domain name, you add in a database MariaDB or MySQL. Once the software is all installed Valet itself will launch automatically on startup of macOS.
Set Up Local Development Environment
Install Homebrew
First up is to install Homebrew so the key parts of the web stack such as PHP and MySQL/MariaDB can get installed easily.
This will install the Homebrew package manager and Xcode command line tools if not already installed.
Install composer with Homebrew
Get PHP and MySQL set up
Install PHP
For the database you can choose between MariaDB and MySQL and which version of MySQL, since version 8 is not supported at a number of hosting panels, version 5.7 maybe safer – otherwise drop the @5.7 suffix. For mariaDB I would use 10.3 as 10.4 has some root password changes.
Also if you are using a version of the app using @10.3 etc, after install you need to add the path to your shell as it is an older Homebrew formula, you are remonded of this at the shell prompt after Homebrew installs – example below of path with mariaDB path in .bash_profile
Install MySQL/MariaDB – background service works after restart
or…
Start it as background service
MySQL/MariaDB installs as user root with no password.
Get Laravel and Valet set up
Install Laravel
Install Valet with composer
Make sure your macOS shell path has the following location, this will allow you to easily use valet commands on the command line – if you don’t include it you will need to prefix all valet commands with ~/.composer/vendor/bin/
Install valet
Now it will install dnsmasq and set up Nginx and PHP and start valet, some basic valet commands below…
Do a ping test to a fictitious domain, look for some pingbacks from 127.0.0.1
A responding ping will verify dnsmasq and the other components have been successfully set up.
Confirm you have dnsmaq, mysql, Nginx and php running…
Output should be…
To update Laravel Valet
Webroot & park
Probably the best method for a webroot directory is to use the Sites folder in your home, this was a traditional webroot in the past of the macOS user account filing system – if one is not there either make one in the Finder or via the Terminal
Register the Sites folder with Valet, so any top level folders will be treated as a serving site – use the park command
There is also a valet link command that allows a directory somewhere else in the filing system to serve its content as a webroot, it does so by putting a symbolic link in the park directory – Sites.
To set up new Laravel project sites you can use the command
The first site created this wat takes a while with a number of downloads when it is done a new http://sitename.test is viewable in the browser – but what about with an actual WordPress install? – see next.
WordPress and Valet
So the best code to serve up ready made WordPress sites is wp-cli-valet-command it can spin up sites very quickly and can be further enhanced taking advantage of bash scripting.
First of all, you need to have wp-cli installed, use Homebrew to install or manually this guide can cover that process.
Increase your PHP memory size, especially if you installed PHP with Homebrew – otherwise, a fatal error will occur when installing wp-cli-valet-command package, find your PHP memory limits .ini config file
Change limits to 1024M in all 3 places
Also, make sure your MySQL or mariadb is running…
Once you have wp-cli add the wp-cli-valet-command package
Once this is installed you are ready to create some WordPress sites…
To install a new site, move into your Sites folder and run a wp valet command
This will set up https://newsitename.test ready to go WP-Admin defaults are admin/admin for username and password.
All new sites are by default set up with https – to set one up just as http – run…
To remove a site…
For more commands and options check out the GitHub repo for wp-cli-valet and also you can create custom sites with a certain theme, plugins, etc by rolling your own bash scripts.
Toggle SSL
To toggle between whether or not a site uses an SSL cert..
or
Terminal output
Wordpress For Mac Os X
phpMyAdmin
To deal with MySQL via phpmyAdmin – create a new site
So now you have a https://phpmyadmin.test – remove all the WordPress files and download and move into the folder the latest phpmyadmin files – if your MySQL install is no password then change the config file as prompted to AllowNoPassword. Now all your databases are easily accessible.
You can take WordPress site installation further with Valet by adding a bash script that includes further refining the install with plugins and themes tailoring – see the next article on Valet, wp-cli and bash scripting.
mariaDB 10.4 ERROR 1698 (28000): Access denied for user ‘root’@’localhost’
Since v10.4 mariadb has had some root/password major changes, if you are getting this error when creating new sites with valet use your macos shortname instead with a db user variable like so…
So a new site ‘sitename’ is created with the macOS shortname of the account ‘admin’
Toggling PHP Versions
The initial PHP Hombrew downloaded version is 7.3, you can add other PHP versions and set Valet to use a different version…
Valet will download PHP7.2 via HomeBrew and use it, you can also use…
Using PHP 5.6
To use PHP 5.6 you need to add an unofficial Homebrew tap as these have been removed from regular Homebrew taps.
Then try Valet
If you get a syntax error .composer/vendor/illuminate/support/Collection.php on line 103 – run…
Using Valet without an admin password
The default behaviour is for an admin password to be requested for each valet command, this can be surpasses with…
Which allows both valet and Homebrew commands to be password free.
Wordpress For Mac Download
References