The plan was to set up my mac as a local web server for testing purposes, to see if WordPress is worth anything or not, and learn how it works BEFORE spending money on some domain.
I got Mac OS X Server 10.8, I switched on Web Server, and I can now see the OS X Server website placeholder online through my iphone, by entering my computers IP. So far so good.
Now comes the frustrating task of making WordPress work.
(I’ll try to guide you through my experience, which obviously shows that I’m a web newbie, and might explain why WordPress is such a frustrating product for people like me. But ironically I thought the whole idea of WordPress was to make certain things easier for people like me……)
First I downloaded the latest version of WordPress (3.4.2), unpacked it, and placed it in my webserver directory. I then visit my website again, and now what I see is this:
There doesn’t seem to be a wp-config.php file. I need this before we can get started.
Okay, I guess this is standard when first installing WordPress? I click the big button called:
Create a Configuration File
Next I’m informed that I need several database information:
Database name
Database username
Database password
Database host
Tabel prefix
I have no idea what this is and where I should have had this information from during the installation process.
I check the requirements again for WordPress, and notice that all I need is:
PHP version 5.2.4 or greater
MySQL version 5.0 or greater
Ok I though this was some “under the hood” technology similar to when something needs java or flash to run, and I assumed it was something already included in OSX?
Anyway I check google and see that OS X Server includes PHP 5.3.13 and that MySQL was dropped in favor of something called PostgreSQL (9.1.4), which should be able to do the same thing. So I don’t know what the issue is.
Back to some googling, and I discover that I have to set up something called a database. In “The Famous 5-minute Install” guide the second steps is:
2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
How?
More frustration and back to googling around.
…And this is currently where I’m stuck. Most of the articles I find seems outdated or contains rather complicated installation and terminal instructions, and reading comments from people doing these procedures and getting themselves into more problems, I’m starting to think I might end up messing up my system badly with this.
I tried to follow some of the long complex guides, but have only ended up in error during terminal use.
It simply cannot be true that this WordPress has to be this complicated for the exact type of users it’s trying to advertise for (“ease of use”, “blogging made easy”, e.g.).
Why is there no solid help to be found on how to install this? All I read is vague instructions like “Create a database” = How??
