This is Part 3 of Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS.

Now that you have MAMP installed on your Macintosh computer (if not, see part 2 of this tutorial) you can put as many installations of Joomla! on your computer for development as disk space permits. Developing and testing Joomla! on your localmachine before making changes to your live server site can save all kinds of headaches, not to mention unwanted disruptions to your site in the case that something doesn't go the way you intended it.

OK, lets get on with the Joomla! install inside MAMP. Do not forget that MAMP is an application. It has to be running in order for anything to work. So launch the MAMP application.

When MAMP is running you will get a web page come up titled 'Welcome to MAMP' with a URL of 'http://localhost:8888/MAMP/?language=English'. On my computer it launched Safari. The Web page will have some information that you will want to use with the Joomla! install. Check about halfway down the page for:

To connect to the MySQL Server from your own scripts use the following connection parameters:

Host: localhost
[Port: 8889]
User: root
Password: root

If you see this page with the information above on it you are good to go.

Now go and get a full install of Joomla! from http://forge.joomla.org/sf/frs/do/viewRelease/projects.joomla/frs.joomla_1_0.1_0_11 [Note: this link may change once more release versions of Joomla! become available. Find the most recent link on the home page of joomla.org]

I picked up the zip version. When the package downloaded to my computer it automatically unzipped to a folder called 'Joomla_1'. You can rename this folder, but not any of the files inside it, to whatever you want. I'm going to leave it 'Joomla_1' (without the quotation marks) for this lesson.

Now go to your 'Applications' folder where your MAMP program is. MAMP should be in a folder in your 'Applications' folder. Open the MAMP folder up and look for the 'htdocs' folder. That's where you are going to put the 'Joomla_1' folder with all it's sub folders and files. Once it is in there it's time to go to your web browser.

In the URL of your web browser, if you haven't closed the 'Welcome to MAMP' window you will see the URL 'http://localhost:8888/MAMP/?language=English'. Change that URL or copy it to another browser window or tab to read 'http://localhost:8888/joomla_1/' and hit the return or enter button. The URL will change to 'http://localhost:8888/joomla_1/installation/index.php' and you will see the Joomla! Installer pre-installation check web page.

Most everything on that page, providing that everything is OK, will be a positive reply to the checks. Either a 'Yes', or 'Available', or 'Writeable'. In the recommended settings (middle section) I have one red colored 'OFF' instead of a green 'ON' for 'Display Errors'. That's OK, it won't stop the installation so let's continue. If there are things that do need to be fixed you'll have to deal with them before you can continue. In my case we're good to go. At the top of the page there is the 'Next>>' button, click that.

Now you are at the license page. There is nothing to set here but you may want to read the license if you have never done so. When you are ready click the 'Next>>' at the top right of the page.