This is a beginner step by step tutorial that will help you set up your Mac, so that you can run PHP and MySQL locally and test the functionality of your websites. This post is written to graphic designers, who know little about programming, but are learning to incorporate PHP engines with MySQL databases into their web sites and want to test their designs in action or want to extend their services to include basic PHP functionality. So, sorry if I sound like I'm spoonfeeding you and being overly conversational. :)

You can upload websites to your hosting servers and test them on-line, but it's much faster and easier to test them on your own machine locally. Most importantly locally you can create as many databases as you want for each of your web projects, while most hosting companies only allow one. This set-up will allow you to install opensource engines like phpBB, WordPress or Drupal. You can also start taking snippets of code from different sources and testing them on your Mac.

You need to run three applications to be able to start your own PHP webserver:

1. Apache: Web sharing application that serves pages from your hard disk to your browser.
2. PHP: PHP engine that translates your PHP code into html code.
3. MySQL: Database engine, that allows you to have databases, which PHP can communicate with to fill up the html pages with content.

Apache
First of all let me start with the good news. If you have Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), than you already have Apache and PHP installed already. You just need to start them.

To start Apache, you simply need to switch on the System Preferences /Sharing /Personal Web Sharing.

PHP
To start PHP you need to copy the line of code below, than open Terminal and paste it in. Than press enter (make sure that when you copy commands you don't copy any additional spaces or linebreaks, only the code):
sudo pico /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

You will need to enter your admin password. This will open a Terminal based word processor called pico. Welcome to the eighties. :)

You will need to delete two instances of "#" from the opened file to make the lines active. The two lines are the following:
#LoadModule php4_module
#AddModule mod_php4.c

Select and copy the first line. To search in this editor you will need to press CTRL-W (instead of Apple-F). Paste in the first line to the search field and press return. Once Pico located the line your we were looking for, you need to press right arrow to align with the letter "L" and a backspace to delete the "#". Now copy the second line and do a search in Pico again. Once you have deleted the second "#" you will need to save your document by pressing CTRL-O (instead of Apple-S). Press return again. Finally quit the editor by pressing CTRL-X (instead of Apple-Q).

You are still in in Terminal and you will need to restart your Apache, so that it starts PHP, so copy the following line to the Terminal:
sudo apachectl graceful

It should give you this message:
/usr/sbin/apachectl graceful: httpd gracefully restarted

MySQL
First you need to download MySQL. You will need to install MySQL-Standard, and than the MySQLStartupItem.

Now go back to Terminal and enter the following command:
sudo -b /usr/local/mysql/bin/safe_mysqld

Finally you need to add a password to your MySQL root user. Change the "yourpasswordhere" in the code below to a password you can easily remember:
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root password yourpasswordhere

Test your PHP and MySQL setup
To test PHP download this file double click to decompress and put it into your Library /Webserver /Documents/. This is the folder that you will copy your sites into.

Now open your browser and type this in as a url:
http://localhost/phpinfo.php

To test your database you can simply type this into the Terminal:
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql test

The message you receive means that you opened the database named test and you're ready to work on it. You can manage your databases from the Terminal but there is an easier way to do it. For now just simply type the following to quit the MySQL prompt:
\q

MySQL graphical interface
If you prefer a more graphic interface to manage databases download this little application and double click it to open the archive.

Open the config.inc.php file in the /phpMyAdmin folder in any text editor such as TextEdit or Pico. You will need to edit this file to contain your MySQL root password.

Search for "root". Under the root username there will be a password field. Enter your password in there and look further. There should be more than one insance of root in the document. Enter your password under each one. Save the file. Put the phpMyAdmin folder that now contains the edited config file into your webserver folder Library /Webserver /Documents/.

Now type this into your browser to open a graphical interface:
http://localhost/phpMyAdmin/

From now on you can create any number of databases with phpMyAdmin and create any number of folders with your websites in your Library /Webserver /Documents/ folder and you will be able to access them and test them in your browser by typing:
http://localhost/yourwebsitename/

Visit MacZealots for instruction about how to install WordPress or Drupal.

Thanks to Will for the technical guidance.