Build sites you don’t want the world to see (since search engines can’t index your local site).Develop and design your site locally-no need to worry about “breaking” the live site by testing out a few changes.( For WAMP-specific setup instructions, watch this video.) Why use MAMP? It works in a similar way using Apache, PHP and MySQL. While MAMP is for Macintosh users, WAMP is available for Windows users. (If you’re unsure of how the internet works, I highly recommend watching this short YouTube video.)īasically, just know that MAMP allows you to run a WordPress site on your computer only (without anyone else being able to see it because it is not actually on the internet), which is why MAMP is awesome for testing out new features on your existing site, making bigger changes, or building an entire site from scratch. Instead, we connect indirectly to the Internet through internet service providers (ISP).

And they are not connected directly to the Internet. However, the computers you and I use every day are not on web servers. Every time you visit a webpage, a server grabs information from a database (an actual building full of storage) and sends it back to your browser. That means you can build entire websites and see what they would look like online without being connected to the Internet.Īll the websites we visit online day in and day out run on web servers, designated computers that are programmed to do one thing: serve information from a database to your browser window. When these four components come together, they create a local web server on your computer only.

PHP: server-side scripting language (which WordPress sites run on).

MySQL: most widely available relational database in the world (all WordPress sites use MySQL databases).

Here’s a breakdown of the four components of MAMP: Basically, it is a free application you can install on your Mac computer that gives you access to a local Apache server-and open source server. MAMP stands for Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. I’ll break everything down step-by-step, with screenshots and additional articles you can turn to. If this sounds overwhelming, don’t worry.

And how to use MAMP in the future with other sites you’d like to test.

How to install WordPress on your computer (and where to store it).

How to install and configure MAMP on your computer.

I created this walkthrough to show beginners (like I was!) how to get MAMP up and running on your computer so you’ll have a fully functioning coding environment for developing a WordPress site. MAMP allows you to build and test WordPress sites offline, entirely on your own computer. When you develop a site locally, it means you can build it on your computer and simulate an online environment without putting your site online for the world to see. Have you ever tested out a small change on your WordPress site only to have the entire site come crashing down? Or maybe you’ve tried to build a new site-not wanting the world to see it yet-only to notice that your test site is receiving traffic from Google.Ī solution to problems like these (and others) is creating websites locally using the free MAMP application. It’s a good question, because streamlining your coding environment is particularly important in WordPress. When I first started coding, one of the things I struggled with most was figuring out my “set up.” I wanted to know how exactly programmers get their code online: Where do they write it? How do they transition between building a site and making it live? Where do all the files live? Where do you make edits if you want to change a file that’s already online? I didn’t know at the time, but my question was really: “How should I set up my coding environment?”

Start mamp server on windows