MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. It's great software that let's you develop offline.

My problem had been that no matter what images I would upload, the EXIF data was not being extracted. Interestingly enough, the IPTC tags were. People kept telling me that maybe it was my images and the EXIF data didn’t exist in the images I was uploading. But that wasn’t the problem because I could upload it to Flickr and the EXIF would display fine. I also checked the EXIF in Photoshop CS3 and it was fine also. Couldn’t figure out the issue.

I had about given up on ever being able to display the EXIF data on my blog until today, I was making some design changes to this theme on MAMP and decided to just layout the look of the EXIF data just in case I figured out a solution one day and to my surprise, the EXIF data showed up!

This is what you should see in your PHPInfo to know that the EXIF extension has loaded correctly.

After a bit of digging, turns out that the PHP EXIF extension was not enabled on my VPS (virtual private server). The beauty of MAMP is that practically all the extensions are turned on and I was able to immediately see the problem.

Now enabling the EXIF extension on PHP takes a bit of work and the wonderful techs at my web host, Autica (a part of MidPhase that is also part of AN Hosting), are currently working on getting it enabled for me. It sounds easy, but it’s complicated and easy to screw up if you’re not careful. You have to uncomment the line that executes the EXIF extension in your php.ini file and then recompile Apache. I think most people on shared hosting won’t have to worry about this, depending on host, it should be enabled and compiled. But if you notice that the EXIF data isn’t be extracted, then create a phpinfo file and run it on your web server to see if EXIF is installed. Now I have to go back and reupload all the images that I uploaded when the EXIF extension wasn’t active. Fortunately that only means some 9 albums as I hadn’t put up all the old and new albums just yet.

Also if you are interested in the code that is necessary to extract the EXIF, please see this post by Sarah as this was the first post I could find via Google that showed the code on how to do it.

[UPDATE 2008-08-02: My webhost has successfully enabled the EXIF extension! Apparently what was causing the delay was that the Apache version, for some reason, wouldn't recompile with eaccelerator. So now Apache has been recompiled with EXIF but no eaccelerator until a partch by Apache comes out. Thanks Autica!]

Before my friend introduced me to MAMP (Mac + Apache + MySQL + PHP), I wasn’t really able to do much web producing commuting to work. I was limited to making site mockups using Adobe Photoshop CS2 and some basic coding, but I couldn’t actually make the pages until I had internet connection so I could upload my test site to the sandbox.

Then came along MAMP, an all-in-one application for Mac OS X that allows you to locally host a web server! This was fantastic because now I can develop, hard code, check changes, and make all the changes I want without having an internet connection. It also lets me test run PHP codes or scripts that may be unstable and vulnerable without risking the web server.

How To Install

Installing and configuring MAMP is very, very easy.

1. Download the latest copy of MAMP from the MAMP website. After it is done downloading, double click the downloaded file to unzip the contents.
2. Drag the MAMP folder into the Applications folder.
   
3. Once MAMP has completed copying into the Applications folder, you can find the executable at Applications>MAMP>MAMP.
   
4. When you start it up, you’ll notice two things will appear: (1) the MAMP admin panel and (2) http://localhost:8888/MAMP/?language=English loaded into your default web browser.
5. From the admin panel you can stop and start the Apache and MySQL servers.
   
6. Your default web url is http://localhost:8888/ and your public folder is located (by default) at Applications>MAMP>htdocs. So anything that is placed within the htdocs folder will appear at http://localhost:8888/. Please note that this web address is local only and others will not be able to see it or the contents even if your computer is connected to the internet. I’ve seen where some people have mistakingly thought that MAMP can be used as a live web server. No, this was only designed to allow people to work locally.
7. To change the default location of what folder will be the web folder, in MAMP, go to the menu bar and select Preferences and then select the Apache tab. Enter or select a new location.
   

Step 1: Enable Apache.

Go to System Preferences > Sharing and enable Personal Web Sharing. Verify that Apache has started by opening a browser and pointing it to http://localhost/.

Step 2: Install MySQL.

This is almost as easy as enabling Apache since MySQL has excellent support for Mac OS X.

Go to http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/ and pick out the latest OS X flavored package. Make sure to get the right one for your architecture. Mount the dmg and you should see two installer packages: one for the MySQL database, and the other installs the MySQL startup item.

The easiest thing to do is just run the standard installer for the database. It should be called something like mysql-standard-VERSION-apple-ETC.pkg. After that is installed, install the file MySQL.prefPane by double-clicking it. This is a panel in the System Preferences that allows you to start, stop and configure the database for automatic start.

Your database is installed. Look into the MySQL documentation if you want to secure it, because right now, the user name is root and there is no password.

Step 3: Install PHP.

Go to http://www.php.net/downloads.php and download the latest source version. You’ll want to put this in your directory (that’s my preference, at least), so open up a terminal:

cd /usr/local/src/ sudo fetch http://path/to/the/latest/download/from/php.net/ sudo tar zxvf php-VERSION-ETC.tar.gz cd php-VERSION

At this point you’re in the PHP source directory. We’ll now configure our PHP. NOTE: This example has the bare minimum of options to get this all working properly. See the PHP documentation for more configure options.

sudo make sudo make install sudo cp php.ini-dist /usr/local/lib/php.ini

Make sure to edit to your desired settings. Now we need to edit httpd.conf:

sudo open -a TextEdit /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

And make sure these lines are in their proper locations:

LoadModule php5_module libexec/libphp5.so # Should have been added already AddModule mod_php5.c # Should have been added already AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

Now restart Apache:

sudo apachectl graceful

And verify that the install worked by creating a file called test.php under your Sites directory (/Users/myusername/Sites/) with the following text:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Go to http://localhost/~myusername/test.php to verify that it worked.

Step 4: Enable mod_rewrite. (Optional)

Enabling mod_rewrite requires additional modification of the httpd.conf (and related) files so we can use .htaccess files.

sudo open -a TextEdit /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

Under this line:

<Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents">

You’ll see:

AllowOverride None

Change this to:

AllowOverride All

You’ll also want to modify your user’s configuration file:

sudo open -a TextEdit /etc/httpd/users/myusername.conf

The Options directive must include FollowSymLinks, and the AllowOverride should be AuthConfig All. Example:

<Directory "/Users/myusername/Sites/"> Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks AllowOverride AuthConfig All Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory>

Restart Apache and you’ll be able to use .htaccess files.