This week I've been mulling the idea of using WordPress as a publishing platform for some new projects. On paper it seemed to have most of the requirements I was looking for but I wanted to get my hands dirty and see for myself how it worked and could integrate with some existing platforms.

The problem is that I don't really have time to mess around with my current set up on my Mac and I find online demos somewhat restricting as you can't really see what is going on in the background.

The solution was to quickly install a free software program called MAMP. Similar to the LAMP acronym this stands for Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, and PHP for Apple's OSX operating system.

Once downloaded the install was a breeze. In fact, it is a one click install that required no changing of config files or messing with existing instances of Apache, PHP, or MySQL already on my local drive.

After installing MAMP I found the following tutorial which shows off exactly how to install WordPress using MAMP.

http://www.bleikamp.com/2006/11/16/wordpress-on-a-mac/

All in all the whole process took less than 15 minutes.

It might not be the cleanest way to test some new projects or code but is definitely worth installing purely to save time or having to worry about accidently changing existing settings on your computer.