Running Multiple Local Test Sites on MAMP

You should not need to be changing Apache root at all,
You can install multiple instances of any type of site in htdocs ; assuming u installed it correctly

Use virtual hosts for multiple sites: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/wordpress-3-network-multisite-on-a-local-development-site?replies=49

@ Root
If I don’t specify the document root to the site-1 or site-2 folder through the Apache preferences, nothing works correctly when there are two sites in the htdocs folder.

On the front end, site-1 still displays as blank pages or 404 errors and site-2 loses all of it’s CSS on the home page, and all of the links/subpages just bring you to a directory listing of the files in the htdocs folder. Plus WP doesn’t come up anymore at all for either site and trying to get to the wp-admin results in a 404 error.

Wouldn’t be surprised if I did something incorrectly on the installation, but I can’t tell what. And what confuses me further is that WP is able to find everything in the dashboard/wp-admin area, but everything is missing when the browser tries to display it.

@keesiemeijer

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll look into that and see if I can get ti working.

So, I have been trying to get the virtual hosts to work, but no luck so far, and after looking a bit more into this, I think it’s just that I am using the free version of MAMP as opposed to MAMP Pro. From what I gather, one of the incentives for upgrading to Pro is it has the ability to support multiple sites/virtual hosts whereas the free one does not.

I could be wrong though. I am often enough. If it is possible to do on the free version I would appreciate it if someone could enlighten me, otherwise, I’ll have to wait until the boss approves the upgrade and try it again.

No it’s possible on the free version. I do it myself.

Edit the host file and the httpd.conf and flush the dnscache. Can you show us what you put in these files? Make sure you set Mamps ports to the default Apache and MySQL ports. maybe you need to make some changes in wp-config?

Ok, well here’s what I’ve got/tried, and maybe someone sees what I’m missing/doing wrong. (Sorry a bit long here)

Attempt 1: On this one I tried using the ports and settings that worked before with one site in the MAMP preferences and working based off of that.

On this try all of the source files for Site #1 were contained in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/site-1
Files for Site #2 were in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/site-2

I have a database set up for each site in phpMyAdmin.

MAMP settings: (these are what MAMP is set to when I click “Reset MAMP ports”)

Apache Port: 8888
MySQL Port: 8889
Apache Document Root : /Applications/MAMP/htdocs

Site #1 WP_Config Settings:

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'site-1');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'user);

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Site #2 WP_Config Settings:

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'site-2');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'user);

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

This is what I added in the host file:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 localhost site-1.dev
127.0.0.1 localhost site-2.dev

And this is what I put into the httpd.conf file

NameVirtualHost *
<VirtualHost *>
DocumentRoot "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs"
ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost> 

<VirtualHost *>
DocumentRoot "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/site-1"
ServerName site-1.dev
<Directory "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/site-1">
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *>
DocumentRoot "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/site-2"
ServerName site-2.dev
<Directory "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/site-2">
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Then I rebooted…

No go. Browsers are unable to find the servers.

Then, after copying the source files into Users/user_name/Sites I tried again with the following settings:

MAMP settings: (these are what MAMP is set to when I click “Set to default Apache and MySQL ports”)

Apache Port: 80
MySQL Port: 3306
Apache Document Root : /Applications/MAMP/htdocs

WP_Config Settings: Nothing changed here.

host file: Nothing changed here.

httpd.conf file:

NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs"
ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "/Users/user_name/Sites/site-1"
ServerName site-1.dev
<Directory "/Users/user_name/Sites/site-1">
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "/Users/user_name/Sites/site-2"
ServerName site-2.dev
<Directory "/Users/user_name/Sites/site-2">
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Rebooted and… still can’t find the servers.

Then I just started throwing things at the wall seeing if anything stuck. Like using the MAMP ports from the first attempt with the httpd.conf settings from the second and different things like that, but no luck still.

I’ve been going at this awhile now and seem to be making no progress.
Anyone see my mistake?

First thing I see, set DB_USER and DB_PASSWORD to root for both sites

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'root');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'root');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

is this the database you set up in phpmyadmin?

define('DB_NAME', 'site-1'); (site-1 and site-2)

the ports when clicking Preferences > Ports > Set to default Apache and MySQL ports are:
Apache: 80
MySQL: 3306

My sites don’t live in the /Applications/MAMP/htdocs
but in a folders:
/Users/[My User Name]/Sites/site-1
/Users/[My User Name]/Sites/site-2

they don’t have to live in the:
/Applications/MAMP/htdocs

also change this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 localhost site-1.dev
127.0.0.1 localhost site-2.dev

to this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 site-1.dev
127.0.0.1 site-2.dev

Thanks for the help. The username and password were already ‘root’ I just changed them here (along with the site names) to be generic and also to make it clear what db/directory/etc was associated with which site.

So this was kind of working for a while after re-installing MAMP, and doing fresh installs of WP and then changing:

127.0.0.1   localhost
127.0.0.1   localhost site-1.dev
127.0.0.1   localhost site-2.dev

to

127.0.0.1 localhost
123.0.0.1   site-1.dev
127.0.0.1   site-2.dev

and taking the quotations from the document root paths in the httpd.conf file to have:

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs"
ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/site-1
ServerName local.site-1.dev
<Directory "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/site-1">
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/site-2
ServerName local.site-2.dev
<Directory "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/site-2">
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

For a short time I was able to view both sites through the browser and access both sites in WP. The only problem I was experiencing during this time, was for site-2– after publishing/updating posts and pages or changing certain settings, a blank page would load instead of the same WP page saying “Your post has been updated.” That was acceptable. I could still do everything I needed to do.

But then I tried to add a third site into the mix. This is when things reverted back to problemland. Now site-3 worked fine, both in WP and when viewing the site. But now site-1 was accessible on the backend through WP, but I couldn’t view the actual site (it just loads a blank page, no errors), and site-2 wasn’t accessible through WP (just loads a blank page, no errors), but I can view that site through a browser.

After some digging around and checking error logs I was able to find that the was an extra character/typo in my functions.php files that seemed to be tripping the sites up. Deleted that, and now everything seems to be in working order, at least for the time being.

Thanks again for all of the help.

Try this video. It worked for me and was easy.

https://www.macappguide.com/mamp/

I actually have my sites in my
homefolder/sites/site1
homefolder/sites/site2

I have my MapPro servers as
localhost
localhosttwo

This so worked!