I have been setting up my mac for web development work, this naturally meant MAMP.   MAMP is an acronym of Macintosh, Apache, MySQL and PHP.  Initially I thought it would be tricky to setup, but in fact it was rather simple.

To get going all I needed to do was download MAMP from here.  Once you have installed the application all you need do is have a quick read of the readme file to sort out MySQL and then you are all set.  Simply place your scripts inside the htdocs directory (under MAMP in Applications).  Pretty simple  To run your scripts locally you will have to navigate to http://localhost:8888/index.php inside your browser of choice.  Fairly simple I think

From my understanding a non free version of MAMP is available.  Details of what you get for your cash can be seen here.  Personally speaking I am happy with the free version,  though if the software proves to be quality and used regularly (as oppose to just testing on my server) then I shall consider the upgrade.  I suppose it would also be a nice thing to support the developers and thus making it feasible for them to offer a free version.