MAMP can be tricky.

So, I made my first attempt at Wordpress. Me likey. I setup MAMP on my MacBook but had a few problems. It turns out that there are some serious problems with using root to login to your mySQL db’s. I don’t know much about it but I learned a lot today.

Basically, here was my problem:

I installed MAMP and it worked correctly the first time but I needed to install Wordpress. So, I found a nice little tutorial over at Tech-Recipes which served as basic guidelines through the ordeal. Earlier, I setup a mySQL database on my free hosting account at 000webhost (thanks @joelnewcomer) and locally tried creating the database and user privileges with the info I was provided there. But, somewhere along the way I made an error (I think it was in the ‘host’ field when setting up my local db).

At first I got a ‘could not connect to host’ error, and later ended up making progress to a ‘404 error’ and then eventually a ‘database connection error.’ I’m not quite sure what fixed the problem but maybe this will help someone out there in interwebworld:

• I had to make sure that Apache and MySQL weren’t running so I went to System Prefs > Sharing, turned off Web Sharing and restarted my computer. Yes, there are terminal scripts but I wanted to make sure.
• Also, I reinstalled MAMP by deleting the folder withing Applications, rerunning the MAMP .dmg and copying it over to the Applications folder again.
• Then, I placed the Wordpress package files within Applications/MAMP/htdocs/ folder.
• I ran MAMP, clicked Preferences, changed some settings, pressed OK, then clicked Preferences and changed them back. I kept the ports on the default MAMP port settings (you can set this by clicking the ‘Reset MAMP Ports’ button under Preferences > Ports tab).
• Here’s the kicker: when I clicked the “Open Start Page” button, I always got an error, even when it was fixed. So, I went to http://localhost:8888 and got the ‘Wordpress config file missing’ page. At this point, I still needed to setup my database. To get to the phpmyadmin page within MAMP, you have to go to http://localhost:8888/MAMP/ (and click on phpmyadmin) not the link that MAMP creates, which is http://localhost:8888/Applications/MAMP/. This only works if you have /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/ as you Document root and your Start Page URL in MAMP preferences. This was a very frustrating glitch but I finally figured it out.
• Once I created the database, the only problem I had was using the correct host name. When in phpmyadmin, create your database and then click the localhost link at the top of the screen so that you see the whole system setup, not just one database’s specs. Then click Privileges and create a new user. This is where you setup your 3 major fields: username, password and host. For host I just put “localhost,” not “localhost:8889″ or “localhost:8888,” which some troubleshooting tutorials may give.
• Then go back to http://localhost:8888 and follow the WP config file setup. I just put ‘localhost’ as the host when doing this.

Now, you should be set! If you have other problems, feel free to post your questions in the comments.