New to the community? Start here

WPMU Development on MAMP

Hi,

I run a couple large subdomain installs of mu.

For a long time I got away without a local development clone but now I really do need to set this up.

I have tried to do so although their seems to be endless technical details to get around. How would you go about running a clone and keeping sites relatively and easily sync’d (I rather not have to rewrite config files every time I move back and forth or have different versions, with different settings everywhere).

I have MAMP installed and working on OSX. I have my wpmu installed copied locally. I have dumped and imported the database.

Currently I have the install copied into a subdirectory of my apache directory root. I realise that this is no good because the subdomains will never work that way – but that problem isn’t as easy to solve as moving to the root. I loosely kind of understand that I probably need to enable mod_rewrite -but I’m not sure how and what settings this will require. Not sure how to set up the wildcard DNS entry……

I am half guessing that I need MAMP Pro…so I could set up a number of virtual hosts for each project?? but I don’t want to fork out if unnecessary …

At the moment I can’t get a database connection -I’m assuming that is because somewhere something in my install references the original domain or db details.

There are a few tutes on installing on WPMU – but not much guidance around on setting up a good clean development environment.

Thanks,

Mat

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 2:30:34
  • Aaron
    • Ex Staff

    I don’t know of an easy way. I run mu with wamp and the same files which is easy to sync. Syncing the db is more work. You have to do a find replace on the exported SQL to replace the real domain with your test domain. Then I have my hosts file (not sure what that is on a mac) edited to include my test domain and a sample series of blog subdomains. Like blog1.test.net, blog2. Etc.

  • Tammie
    • WordPress Wizard

    I run 2 MAMP installs myself and also run WordPress on both of those along with BuddyPress. I wouldn’t say you’d need the pro myself but it does depend on the route you go with the subdomains – but I’m fairly sure you can edit any host files without buying pro. Personally I keep my MAMP installs as true to testing environments so it’s not an issue for me as want them as ‘default’ as possible. It depends though on which os you are using as my non-leopard install needed different set up to my leopard one with regards to what I put in for localhost therefore I’d suggest checking out the documents with MAMP regarding that as that could be the reason your database isn’t starting. You also need to be running as an admin user on mac os and you may or may not get an ‘enter admin password’ – I do on my leopard install but do not on my non leopard one for instance.

    Totally agree over svn I had that going a while back when working on a larger project and it was great for syncing with my local MAMP install.

  • psychosophonis
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Hi Aaron and tlister,

    There is a lot to process here and I think a lot of fiddling. I’ll document the process as I work it out. I have edited the hosts file and the httpd.conf according to what I think they should read…

    added to hosts..

    127.0.0.1 site1.com

    added to the MAMP httpd.conf;

    #NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1

    <VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>

    DocumentRoot “/Users/name/Documents/Production/wpmudev/site1/site1.com”

    ServerName site1.com

    ServerAlias site1.com *.site1.com

    </VirtualHost>

    I only manage to break the 127.0.0.1:8888/ this way………

    If I can get this working I can see how mamp might work for a subdomain wpmu..

  • isos
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    I haven’t set this up yet, but this is my intent.

    1. WPMU is already running in an Ubuntu Server Virtual Machine

    2. Create an identical Ubuntu Server Virtual Machine

    3. Run it locally with local DNS

    4. Update the files and DBs daily

    That negates any issues with modification of paths, domain names, IP addresses, etc.

    Any reason why that wouldn’t work?

  • psychosophonis
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Yes this will work the trouble is there is very little documentation about how the config needs to change for say a shift in domain – and I use a hosted service meaning I’d really like a local (and portable) dev environment. If your dev domain is the same then I imagine it’ll be fine….inconvenient and rather confusing – bit it will work I think.

    So far;

    1) Set Up MAMP on OSX (10.6.2) with custom root dir.

    2) Copied install to folder within root

    3) Dumped and restored DB

    4) Added dev domain to hosts file.

    5) Added a Virtual Host entry (as above) to the MAMP httpd.conf

    At the moment I can’t get the virtual host to work.

    Without the virtual host working I am nowhere near a DB connection.

    Thanks,

    Mat

  • Barry
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    Are you running MAMP or MAMP Pro?

    As far as I am aware, only MAMP Pro allows virtual hosts. I’m running normal MAMP personally, and switch between directories with my different development sites in, as I generally only develop on a single site at a time.

  • James Farmer
    • Founder & Chair (honest)

    @psychosophonis we’ve never advertised, nor ever would, that we’ll support people setting up local installs or guarantee solutions for plugins / configs that we don’t offer here.

    As you can see we’re doing our best to assist you from the experience we have, if that doesn’t meet your needs then you can feel free to try to find another service that offers the range and breadth of support (not to mention the plugins and themes) that we offer here… from less than $35 p/month (if you take the annual option).

    If you want hand holding through every stage of something like MAMP installation then I suggest you hire someone to help you or find a service that supports that.

    Otherwise, if you do wish to persist with trying to find a solution to your issues, please don’t approach it in such a confrontational manner… it doesn’t help anything get done and is certainly unlikely to persuade people to go out of their way to help you.

  • psychosophonis
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Hi James,

    Check my membership history. I don’t post here regularly and would not if I hadn’t done a fair a bit work on the problem myself and tried other forums. When I found no clear instruction or ‘best-practice’ for this proces – and indeed a lot of confused conjecture about what the best approach might be- I bought it here thinking that I could get some professional guidance as to what was required or the right place to look. I was quite willing to try suggestions and bring that result back to this ‘community’.

    In the end however this is a business to which I subscribe for a service. I cite the heading of your forum:

    ‘WPMU DEV Members receive personal, comprehensive and timely support and assistance from experienced WPMU and BuddyPress developers.’

    I guess I took that as meaning literally ‘personal, comprehensive, and timely support’. I’ve obviously interpreted that incorrectly. I didn’t request ‘hand holding’ and I take your invective as confrontational in the extreme. If your support staff had no answer or the question was outside of the scope my subscription then a polite acknowledgement would have been sufficient.

    Thanks to those who added to the thread. I’ll persist on my own – given I work on open, community and public education projects I do have to work out these problems myself rather than simply hire a developer. The subscription fee I pay is not inconsiderable to me and was justified on the basis that at last resort if I needed advice I would find it here.

    Thanks to James for clarifying the situation for me.

    Mat.

  • psychosophonis
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Hi Barry…

    Im running MAMP – as far as I can tell the MAMP Pro install provides gui support for virtual hosts that can nonetheless be configured via the httpd.config in the standard MAMP install. At the least there are two people here running a local mu install with MAMP (I wonder if with subdomain install?) – I think Aaron’s suggestion of setting up a small number of test subdomains might work for me and will simplify the virtual host problem.

    I’ll work on getting that far and then hit the wpmu forums.

    Thanks,

    Mat