Fastest Way to install the latest Drupal 7 version on Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9 or 10.8
Drupal is a quality CMS application and is as simple or complex as your needs vary, it runs on the same foundations that Mac OS X Mavericks or Mountain Lion, Lion or Snow Leopard provides similar to a Linux environment.
This tutorial assumes a certain degree of comfort in the command line application (in the Utilities folder) Terminal for installing Drupal 7 on Mac OS X Lion or Snow Leopard but if the instructions below are followed correctly it will get the job done easily. If you would rather have a point and click install – follow the Drupal OSX guide here.
Before proceeding Drupal needs a couple of things to get going and those things are what is called an AMP stack – Apache, MySQL and PHP. Apache and PHP already come bundled in OS X and just need to be enabled but MySQL needs to be downloaded and configured, luckily a point and click installer is provided.
Optionally and preferably also install phpmyadmin to manage the database from a browser. To get the AMP stack working correctly on OS X follow this guide on Apache/MySQL/PHP and for phpMyAdmin if required. Once these components are in place you are OK to proceed. Or you may already have an AMP stack by using MAMP or XAMPP.
OS X has 2 web document roots ‘/Library/WebServer/Documents’ and ‘/Users/username/Sites/’ also known as ‘~/Sites’ this guide uses ‘~/Sites’. This tutorial assumes that the shared drupal directory will be called “drupal“. The mysql database will be called drupal and the mysql user is root.
Drupal Download and Configure
Make a sharing directory and move into it:
mkdir ~/Sites/drupal ; cd ~/Sites/drupal
get the latest drupal, swap 7.x for incremental updates[
curl -O http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-7.26.tar.gz
expand it
tar -xvzf drupal-7.26.tar.gz
move all files into shared directory one level up
mv drupal-7.26/* .
move hidden files one level up
mv drupal-7.26/.* .
remove compressed archive and empty directory
rm -rf drupal-*
create a settings file
cp ~/Sites/drupal/sites/default/default.settings.php ~/Sites/drupal/sites/default/settings.php
fix permissions on the default directory and settings file
chmod -R a+w ~/Sites/drupal/sites/default
Create the Drupal Database
create a new database (no space between -p and password – as an alternative this can be done in phpmyadmin
mysql -u [username] -p[password] -e "create database [databasename];"
or in phpMyAdmin
Finish the Drupal Install
Open – http://localhost/~username/drupal/
All done! faster than you can say “bitnami” If this is your first time installing Drupal, go with the Standard option
Then when you get to the Database configuration put in the details you used to set up MySQL in this case the db was “drupal” and the db user was “root”. In the advanced options you can tweak the db prefix, port and host, the default “localhost” should be fine for this purpose.
Next steps are to create a master admin account and a few generic system settings and you are done.
Post Installation Tips
As a foot note, to sort out clean URLs, the .htaccess needs a tweak as the install is in a subdirectory, the “RewriteBase” needs to be explicitly set:
# If your site is running in a VirtualDocumentRoot at http://example.com/, # uncomment the following line: RewriteBase /~username/drupal
And also for smoother compatibilities for Drupal upgrades and module/theme add on installs change the local ownership to _www on your drupal web shared directory
sudo chown -R _www ~/Sites/drupal
Upgrading Drupal
To upgrade an incremental version of Drupal – say from 7.12 to 7.26, you download the new core base files and replace the current files in the web root apart from the Sites directory, and if customized, also the .htaccess file.
After replacing the files run a database update: http://mydomain.com/update.php or from within Drupal Admin > Reports > Available Updates > Update to patch any software.
Thats it Drupal should be up and running!