I just want to install WordPress

Although I am a novice at WP, I will share some of my limited knowledge and hope it helps you. WordPress is a content management system and therefor needs a database for it to run. For MAC users I believe it would be MAMP which has the PHP and MYSQL database. You would need to install that first and then WordPress.
When I installed WAMP (for windows) I went to https://www.wampserver.com/downloads for the free install. I would try the MAMP version of that site.

@benc30: I want to address an easy point of confusion before anything else. Especially since I am not clear on what you want to do.

What are you are trying to install? In other words, are you trying to create a WordPress-based web site on a web server somewhere? Or are you trying to simulate a web site on your iMac?

Some people get confused about how WordPress works. When I wanted to create a web site for the world to see and run that web site on one of the popular web hosting companies, I did not install WordPress on my computer. Because everything WordPress needs is stored on the web hosting company, not on my personal computer on my desk. I just use a web browser to access WordPress through Admin pages.

The 5 minute install is written for that situation: installing WordPress on a web hosting company account. There are separate articles in the Codex especially for installing on your own computer and simulating a web site there.

I just wanted to create a simple but elegant website for a local group, that wants to bring the community together. I have used iWeb before, which is a physical piece of software installed on my iMac, which then gets uploaded to an FTP server. After using iWeb previously, I just wanted to find a different way to create a website that looked half decent. So far my iWeb efforts have been acceptable to most, but nothing special or indeed amazing. I thought that by downloading WordPress 3.4.1 I could create a website in a similar way to iWeb, but something that looked better.

So far, I am now so put off designing a website using iWeb and WordPress and wish that I had never got involved with any of it. I have never been so knocked back in trying to do something on the computer, and have never been so totally confused. It appears there is other software I need to install and a load of new jargon.

Perhaps I should have done a lot more research before putting myself forward for trying to help the local group in this way…

I used to say that I was always up-to-date with technology and there was nothing on a computer that I couldn’t do… but now feel so defeated! Something that people say is easy, actually isn’t, and there is plenty more interesting and better things I could be doing with my life, instead of trying to learn a whole host of new things just to create something that actually should be simple.

As a former FrontPage user, I too had to make the transition in thinking. And there are a huge number of ramifications.

With FrontPage (and iWeb, as it sounds) to WordPress, you are moving from one extreme to the other: all the software on your computer versus all the software on the web hosting company’s computer. Hard to fathom at first.

I would suggest trying wordpress.com as there is no software to install and you get pretty much all the functionality you are likely to need. Free, too.

Think I will very carefully & gracefully apologise to the group and tell them my effort to get them a website has been a mistake…. perhaps it is best to call this one quits and go learn a new language or new craft. Time to give technology a break! Sitting in front of a computer all day at work and all night too, is no way to lead a normal and healthy life.

I’m outta here!