Note: The most recent version of WordPress is 1.5.1.3, which contains a security patch among other improvements. This tutorial is fully compatible with the most recent version of WordPress. Version 1.5.1.3 is recommended for all WordPress users (upgrade instructions).

If you have installed another blog engine such as WordPress or Movable Type already, you may already have MySQL and/or PHP configured. If this is the case, you can skip right down to step 4.

Before we get started, let’s summarize what we’ll be going over in the installation:

1. Downloading and Installing WordPress 1.5.1.3
2. Enabling Personal Web Sharing
3. Downloading and Installing MySQL
4. Configuring MySQL
5. Enabling and Testing PHP
6. Configuring WordPress
7. ???
8. Profit!

Downloading and Installing WordPress 1.5.1.3

If we’re going to blog our way to stardom, we’ll need some blogging software, right? The first step we’ll take will be to download the latest stable version of WordPress, version 1.5.1.3. The compressed file should be about 250KB, and OS X will decompress it for you.

Once it’s decompressed, we’ll move the wordpress directory to OS X’s Web hosting directory in /Library/WebServer/Documents. By default, all requests for the domain’s root directory (like http://maczealots.com/) will go to this directory. This can be changed in Apache’s httpd.conf file, which we’ll cover later. If you like, you can also change the name of the wordpress directory to something else, like blog. This way the URL of the blog would change to http://www.yoursite.com/blog/ Additionally, if you want the blog itself to be at the root directory, delete all the items from the /Library/WebServer/Documents directory and move the contents of the wordpress directory to the now-empty Documents folder.

Enabling Personal Web Sharing

“Personal Web Sharing” (PWS) is Apple’s marketing name for Apache, the industrial-strength, tried-and-true Web server du jour. When you enable PWS, OS X starts up Apache, registers the modules, opens ports, etc. Since we’ll be serving the blog, we’ll need to have Apache running.

To enable Personal Web Sharing, open the Sharing preference pane in System Preferences. Check the box labeled “Personal Web Sharing”, and that’s it. (You may have to authenticate as an administrator before it will let you enable anything.) Go ahead and close System Preferences; you’re ready to install MySQL now.

Note: We are working on a version of this tutorial that includes the ability to host the database with SQLite, which is prepackaged in OS X 10.4. However, support for SQLite in WordPress is still being fully developed, so for now MySQL is still the way to go. If you’d like to see such an article, let us know.

Downloading and Installing MySQL

MySQL is the database backend that WordPress (and other blogging packages like Movable Type) can use to store blog entries, users, comments, etc. MySQL is free for personal use. First, download MySQL (4.0.24 at the time of publication). It will come as disk image with two packages and a readme. We will be installing both packages. First, open the main MySQL installer. It will install all the necessary components to run MySQL onto your OS X volume. After that installer has completed, run the startup item installer, which will automatically start up MySQL after any computer restarts.

Note: One of the most common problems reported is that people install MySQL 4.1 instead of 4.0. I can understand the desire to be on the bleeding edge of software, but WordPress (and most other blog/CMS engines) use an older authentication scheme that is incompatible with MySQL 4.1 and greater. There are hacks and workarounds out there, but for the easiest installation, stick to MySQL 4.0.

Configuring MySQL

Now that you have installed MySQL, let’s configure it so WordPress can access it. Open a new terminal session (found in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and type the following commands to navigate, make some changes, and start the MySQL daemon:

cd /usr/local/mysql
sudo chown -R mysql data/
sudo echo
sudo ./bin/mysqld_safe &

Next, let’s launch MySQL and use the test database (called test, even) to make sure everything’s running correctly:

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql test

If everything’s running correctly, you should see output similar to this:

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 1 to server version 4.0.24-standard

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help.  Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql>

Once you’ve verified that MySQL is running correctly, use the command quit to return to the console prompt.

Now that MySQL is running, we’ll change the root password of MySQL so that WordPress (and you) can access it later. Use this command (where yourpasswordhere is replaced by your chosen password):

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root password yourpasswordhere

The last thing we’ll have to do in MySQL is to create a table for WordPress to store its data. We’ll call it wordpress to keep things simple. To accomplish this, we’ll enter MySQL, create the table, and allow WordPress to edit it.

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
quit

Enabling and Testing PHP

Now that MySQL is ready to go, let’s fire up PHP. OS X ships with PHP installed, but not activated. Fortunately, this is really easy to do. The only file we’ll need to edit is httpd.conf, which Apache uses for its configuration.

Open the config file in your favorite editor (I’ll be using pico):

sudo pico /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

Mosey on down to the Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) Support section. It’s the one with all the LoadModule listings. The one for PHP 4 is towards the bottom of that list. Look for the line and uncomment it to activate it. You can uncomment a line by removing the pound symbol (“#”) from the beginning of the line. The new line should look as such:

LoadModule php4_module

We’ll also need to uncomment the PHP 4 entry in the AddModule listings, so that it looks as such:

AddModule mod_php4.c

Once those two lines are edited you can save the httpd.conf file and quit the editor. Since we’ve edited Apache’s load setup, we need to restart Apache so it will recognize the changes:

sudo apachectl graceful

With that out of the way, let’s make sure that PHP is indeed running. Create a new text file in your favorite editor (stay away from RTF-happy TextEdit, though – SubEthaEdit gets my vote) and fill it with the following text:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Save the file as test.php in the root directory (/Library/WebServer/Documents/) and load the address of the page (usually http://localhost/test.php) into a Web browser. If PHP was correctly enabled, the phpinfo(); command should output page after page about the PHP installation. If not, retrace your steps – it can be easy to make a mistake.

Configuring WordPress

Now for the last step: configuring WordPress. First, you’ll need to edit WordPress’ default configuration file wp-config-sample.php. You’ll find it in the root folder of the WordPress installation. This is where you’ll set up the database information. Edit the following settings:

define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress'); – Change ‘wordpress‘ to the name of the database you created in MySQL (in the example we named it wordpress).
define('DB_USER', 'username'); – change ‘username‘ to root.
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password'); – change ‘password‘ to the MySQL password you chose.

Once you’ve made the changes, save the file as wp-config.php in the same directory and delete wp-config-sample.php.

Now, open a Web browser window and start the WordPress installer, found at http://localhost/blog/wp-admin/install.php. (Remember that if you chose to install WordPress in a different directory, such as the root directory, the address will be different for you.) WordPress will take you through the install process and set up the database with all the tables it needs to run.

After it completes, it will give you the login (admin) and password to log in to WordPress. The password is randomly generated and not recoverable so please write it down!

After you log in, there are two things you need to immediately do. First, change your password to something you can remember. You can find it in the Users tab of WordPress’ controls. Also, to avoid posting entries as “Administrator”, you can either create another account with a posting name, or simply enter a nicknaame in the admin account. But whatever you do, change the password and remember it — once you lose it, your data is hard to get back.

Now comes the moment you’ve been waiting for. Click View site » in WordPress’ controls or open a Web browser and go to http://localhost/blog and watch your blog appear! Roll up your sleeves, perfect the CSS, and wax poetic, serving it to the free world without spending a dime on extra software. Happy blogging!

Note: This article is written for installing Movable Type on “Tiger” (Mac OS X 10.4.x). The Panther and older OS X versions of this article, have been relocated to their own seperate, permanent pages.

Many people host a weblog on a third-party web server hosted by someone else, but with MacOS X, we have the tools we need to set up a fully functional weblog on our system. This blog could be served to the entire world via the Internet, or just used as a personal diary on your own system. It doesn’t matter. Weblogs are what you make of them. There are several systems we could use to set up a weblog on our Mac, but for this article I have chosen Movable Type from Six Apart. I chose this solely because I have the most experience with it, as I have used it for almost four years on my personal Web site. Movable Type is designed using a Perl backend. Perl is an interpreted programming language that is capable of doing almost anything you wish. Tiger ships with Perl 5.8.6, which is more than enough for this process. The backend of our weblog will use SQLite. SQLite is the database system that is bundled with Mac OS X Tiger and powers the Core Data framework. Several major Mac applications use SQLite as well. A few examples are Freshly Squeezed Software’s PulpFiction and Michael Tsai’s SpamSieve. This article will assume that you are running a fresh install of MacOS X 10.4 or later and have the MacOS X Developer Tools installed. You should also be comfortable working in the command line and editing system configuration files. If this scares you, you may want to sign up for a service such as Six Apart’s TypePad. Let’s get started… ### Downloads First let’s download all of the files you are going to need to complete this exercise. We are only going to need DBI, DBD::SQLite and Movable Type 3.16. DBD::SQLite is a Perl module that will interface between SQLite and Movable Type. DBI stands for Database Interface and was written by Tim Bunce. The DBI module then speaks to the DBD module. The DBD module we will be using is DBD::SQLite. The biggest advantage of DBI is that you can talk to the database without having to talk on the network to the actual database server or dealing with the server’s libraries. Movable Type is simply a collection of Perl scripts that run the entire weblog system. * Movable Type * DBI * DBD::SQLite ### Apache In terminal, we need to edit our Apache config file. We are basically going to allow for cgi scripts to be executed on the Mac. By default CGI Scripts are located in /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/. We need to uncomment the line in the httpd.conf file that reads # AddHandler cgi-script .cgi I am going to explain how to do it using the vi text editor, but you are more than welcome to use your favorite editor of choice.

sudo vi /etc/httpd/httpd.conf Go down to the line we want to edit and remove the # in front of _AddHandler_ by pressing the x key. Next type in _:wq_ to write and quit vi. Next, type the following into the Terminal window: sudo apachectl graceful The last command simply restarts the apache server without having to restart your system. Oh, the power of Unix. ### Connecting to SQLite Before we can establish a connection between Movable Type and SQLite, we need to install the Perl modules we downloaded earlier. Double-click on each file to extract the folders that live inside. We need to compile these modules so that our database will show up when we test Movable Type. It’s a relatively simple process. Type the following commands in the Terminal: cd ~/Desktop/DBI-1.48 perl Makefile.PL make sudo make install Now we need to install the SQLite module. cd ~/Desktop/DBD-SQLite-1.08 perl Makefile.PL make sudo make install Now that we have our perl modules set up, we can celebrate. We are finally ready to set up Movable Type! ### Movable Type cd ~/Desktop/MT-3.16-full-en_US/ vi mt.cfg Place a # before DataSource ./db Set your CGIPath to equal _http://localhost/cgi-bin/_ Add the following lines to your file. ObjectDriver DBI::sqlite Database /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/db/mtdbmovabletype.sql Set StaticWebPath to _/mt-static/_ Remove the # before _NoTempFiles 1_ :wq Ok, that is a lot of steps, so let’s go through what each one of them is. mt.cfg is the configuration file that gives basic information for the perl backend about your weblog. We set the CGIPath to equal where we are putting the cgi files. On your local system, it is /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/. StaticWebPath is where Movable Type’s images, docs, and other similar files will be stored. We set that to http://localhost/mt-static/ so that the directories are housed in /Library/WebServer/Documents/mt-static/. It should be noted that if you are going to set up your blog to be available for people on the Internet, you should replace all instances of localhost with your external IP address or domain name. The next set of commands is basically telling Movable Type to use the SQLite database. Now you see why we had to set up the DBI and DBD stuff earlier. We turned off NoTempFiles because Tiger was having issues when trying to build the index files. If anyone can find a solution to the problem, please post it in the comments. Let’s jump to the Finder. Yes, I am serious. After all of the love we have been giving the command line we are going back to the good old graphical filesystem. We need to install the Movable Type application onto our Webserver. First, lets copy the static files to the /Library/WebServer/Documents/mt-static/ folder. Make sure to copy the following files to that directory.

• styles.css
• mt.js
• images
• docs
• index.html

Also, go ahead and create a new folder and call it _archives_. This is where we will hold all of our blog entries.

Now, let’s move back a level and enter the CGI-Executables folder. Copy the following files into it.

• examples
• extlib
• lib
• mt-add-notify.cgi
• mt-atom.cgi
• mt-check.cgi
• mt-comments.cgi
• mt-db-pass.cgi
• mt-load.cgi
• mt-search.cgi
• mt-send-entry.cgi
• mt-set-reg.cgi
• mt-tb.cgi
• mt-view.cgi
• mt-testbg.cgi
• mt-xmlrpc.cgi
• mt.cfg
• mt.cgi
• php
• plugins
• schemas
• search_templates
• tmpl
• tools

We are almost done. Now we need to jump back into Terminal and set some permissions for our scripts and create a folder for our database. cd /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/ chmod 755 mt*.cgi mkdir db chmod 777 db cd .. sudo chmod 777 Documents cd Documents chmod 777 archives What we just did is set the cgi scripts to be read and executed by group and others, while you can read, write and execute. If you don’t understand what that means, it is simply a Unix permissions thing. We then created a db folder that will house our SQLite databse. The last two commands set read, write, and execute commands for the archives and Documents folder. I ran into a lot of permissions issues by trying to lock the Documents folder with 755. The archives folder must be 777 though. If you want a more secure set up, I would recommend you recompile Apache with suexec installed. Sadly, Tiger’s version of Apache doesn’t have it compiled in. Everything is set up, let’s test. Pop open Safari and go to the following url. http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt-check.cgimt-check checks for installed perl modules on your system. You should have everything you need installed. If you find you are missing some of the modules, or want to install extra ones, Six Apart does a great job of giving you a walkthrough. This is important…. http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt-load.cgi This step sets up the tables, an initial author and some starter templates in your database. Assuming you have followed my instructions to their exact specifications, the script should report SUCCESS! You have a working Movable Type installation. With Movable Type 3.16, the application has the ability to run several tasks in the background. We need to test to make sure this will work on your system so click on the link below to do that: http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt-testbg.cgi As long as you see two unique numbers listed on the page, you will be fine. Delete mt-load.cgi from /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables. Leaving it on your system is a big security vulnerability, because each time you run it, it is going to reset your database to the initial values. Congratulations, Movable Type is ready to go. ### Basic Configuration http://localhost/cgi-bin/mt.cgi

Now that we have the weblog configured, let’s go through some basic configuration. The link above is where you will do all of your blogging. It houses the configuration, templates and a basic editor. You will be greeted with a login prompt. The mt-load.cgi script created a default user name Melody and a password of Nelson. The first thing you are going to want to do is change that username and password. To accomplish this, just head to the Edit Your Profile link. Change the username and password to something you can easily remember. Next, let’s edit the default weblog to fit your specifications. The default is creatively named Weblog, but you may want to change that to something to describe you. I have my personal one as just my name, but others have been far more creative.
Next, go to the Weblog Config button and let’s double check some values.

• Local Site Path: /Library/WebServer/Documents
• Site URL: http://localhost/
• Local Archive Path: /Library/WebServer/Documents/archives
• Archive URL: http://localhost/archives/

Save those changes, and start blogging, because you are ready. Simply go to the New Entry button and make your first entry. To view your content simply pop open Safari and visit http://localhost/### Conclusion We accomplished a lot. We set up a full-fledged content management system on our Mac using nothing but free or donationware software. This article merely gets you set up with a basic Movable Type installation. There is a vast world of plugins, configuration changes, and tips and tricks out there. Here are a few resources to check out.

• http://www.scriptygoddess.com/
• http://www.movabletype.org/support/