It took a little digging to figure out how to do all the things that I needed to get everything working.  It’s all out there, but I figured I’d write up a short tutorial on how to do it all.   If nothing else, I can refer to it the next time I need to set all this up.

Here are the main steps to get MAMP (Mac OS X LAMP) setup and running on your Mac.  I will elaborate on each in a subsequent post.

1. Download and install the MAMP environment – don’t get cute with it, install it in the Applications folder like it says.
2. Edit your /Applications/MAMP/conf/httpd.conf file to add your virtual hosts, so you can develop multiple sites on your computer.
3. Edit your /etc/hosts file to define your virtual hosts as well.
4. Install any PEAR modules you may need.
5. Change MAMP to use the default ports (I highly recommend this).
6. Install any MySQL client tools you need to do your development work.

That’s it!  My subsequent posts will explain the details behind each step.