MAMP PRO 6.9.0 — Mac version

WordPress folks, PHP tinkerers, and anyone who'd rather not mess with config files by hand. MAMP PRO is for people who want a local web server on their Mac without the command-line dance.

Building and migrating WordPress sites offline

• Running Apache or Nginx with MySQL 5.7 or 8.0, Redis, and Memcached
• Building a WordPress site offline before it goes live
• Migrating a WordPress site from one server to another
• Publishing a local WordPress host to a live server
• Remote editing of files on the host

Toolbar redesign and host-specific crash fixes

• Needs macOS 10.12 or newer
• A redesigned toolbar changes where things live
• Host-specific server configs had crash fixes in 6.9

Say you've got a WordPress site on a dusty old server. You create a host in MAMP PRO — the host dialog is tidied up — point it at MySQL, and import the site. Then you use the publish feature to push it to the live server when you're happy. phpMyAdmin 5 opens properly via alias in this version, so poking at the database feels less fiddly.

Bits you might not spot straight away

There's a handful of small touches that save time once you know they're there. The host list supports drag-and-drop reordering — grab a host and pull it up or down. Handy when you've got five projects and want the current one at the top.

The toolbar's been redesigned, but here's the trick: right-click any host in the sidebar and you get a shortcut menu with start, stop, open in browser, and phpMyAdmin. No need to hunt through the main buttons.

If you switch between PHP versions a lot, the dropdown in the host settings remembers your last pick per host. Each project keeps its own PHP version without you having to re-select every time.

Another quiet one: when you publish a WordPress host to a live server, MAMP PRO grabs a screenshot of the homepage and tucks it into the host overview. Later you can glance at the thumbnail and know which site you're looking at without reading the host name.

One hour building a café site locally

You're building a local WordPress site for a friend's café. Here's how the next hour goes.

1. Open MAMP PRO. The servers start automatically if you've left that setting on. Apache and MySQL kick into life.
2. Click the plus button in the host list. The create dialog opens — it's cleaner now, with fewer fields to fill. You name the host cafesite.local and pick a document root folder.
3. In the same dialog, switch PHP to 8.1. MySQL is already set to 8.0 from the global defaults.
4. Click the WordPress tab, tick "Install WordPress", and hit save. MAMP PRO downloads the latest WordPress, creates the database, and sets up the config file. You've got a running WordPress install in under a minute.
5. Open the host in your browser. Log in, pick a theme, add a few pages. While you work, you notice a plugin needs a Redis cache. Head back to MAMP PRO, enable Redis under the host's Extras tab, restart the host. Done.
6. Half an hour later, the site's ready. You click the Publish button, enter the live server's FTP details, and push everything up. MAMP PRO handles the database migration too — it swaps the URLs from .local to the real domain.
7. Check the live site. The screenshot auto-captures and shows in the host sidebar. You now have a visual record of two versions: local and live.

A front-end dev's setup without the backend headache

Picture a front-end developer who's comfortable with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript but gets twitchy around MySQL command lines and Apache configs. She's been handed a freelance job rebuilding a small business site that runs on an older WordPress theme. The client sent a backup zip of the whole site.

She fires up MAMP PRO, creates a host called client-rebuild.local, and uses the WordPress import feature. She points it at the backup file and lets the app sort out the database connection. Ten minutes later she's browsing the old site locally, picking apart the theme CSS in her editor. Remote editing lets her open PHP templates straight from the host panel into VS Code.

When the client asks to see progress, she publishes a staging version to a subdomain. The built-in migration tool handles the serialised data in the database — the kind of thing that breaks if you do a manual find-and-replace on a SQL dump. She didn't need to touch phpMyAdmin once, though she could've opened it with a right-click if she wanted to peek at the wp_options table.

Apache won't start because port 80 is taken

Apache won't start. Nine times out of ten, another app has grabbed port 80. Skype and some VPN clients are the usual suspects. MAMP PRO shows a red dot next to Apache and a message about the port being in use. The fix: go to the Ports tab in settings and switch Apache to 8080 or 8888. Your local URLs will need the port number appended, like cafesite.local:8080, but everything else works the same.

MySQL stubbornly refuses to launch after a macOS update. This can happen when Apple changes permissions on system folders. The quickest route is to open the MAMP PRO preferences, go to the MySQL tab, and click "Repair database permissions." It runs a script that resets ownership on the data directory. Give it a moment, then try starting MySQL again.

Publishing to a live server fails halfway through. The progress bar stalls, and the log mentions a timeout. Usually it's a large upload hitting the server's maximum execution time or a slow shared-hosting FTP connection. Break the job into pieces: export the database separately using the host's Database tab, upload the files manually once via your own FTP client, then use MAMP PRO's "Import from server" on the other end to complete the migration. Not as one-click as the normal publish, but it gets the job done when the server's being difficult.

WordPress import fails with a vague database error. The culprit is often a mismatch between the MySQL version on the old server and your local one. If the old site ran on MySQL 5.7 and you're using 8.0 locally, some older plugins might throw compatibility errors. MAMP PRO lets you switch the MySQL version per host. Drop down to 5.7 in the host's database settings, restart the host, and try the import again. It usually sorts itself out.

Host ordering helps when you're juggling a few projects. Remote editing means you can tweak a file without digging through Finder.

• Fixed a crash when editing host-specific server configurations
• Fixed several network issues in MAMP Cloud
• Improved installation of PHP versions
• Opening phpMyAdmin 5 via alias now works better

• macOS 10.12 or newer
• Works on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs
• Interface language: English