I'm a MAC guy. I use dreamweaver for most of my coding, but it is a pain to have to FTP the files to my server, then run the scripts in a browser to check them.
On the MAC operating system Apache server is already installed. All you have to do to turn it on is turn on web sharking in system preferences. Then you can go into your configuration and turn on PHP and install MYSQL. Then you can have a working test server right on your system without all the FTPing to test scripts.
Ok great. The problem with that way, for me, was that I found it tough to configure and get it working right. I had to spend a lot of time in Terminal executing commands, installing, tweaking etc. Then I screwed something up and it took me two days to figure out how to fix it.
MAMP IS AWESOME
While poking around the web trying to figure out how to fix what I messed up, I found
MAMP
. I think MAMP is short for "mac apache mysql php." It is a cousin of LAMP "linux apache mysql php."
Basically you donwload MAMP and it puts a folder on your hard drive which already has apache, php and mysql working and ready to go. It seriously took me THREE mouse clicks to get it installed and working. It even has phpMyAdmin and a couple of other very useful utilities already installed and configured.
Since installing MAMP my progress on my own projects has increased greatly because I'm not spending all my time configuring my test server, I'm actually working.
