Installing on Mac Localhost going all sorts of wrong

[MishieMoo]

Okay so I'm trying to set this up on my Mac localhost. It's in the localhost/~michele/process/ directory (and no, it cannot be in the root directory). The front page is missing all of the resources, and I can't seem to find the admin login. All links point to localhost/link instead of the correct location.

I also tried editing the RewriteBase in the .htaccess but nothing seems to change this 

Please let me know how to get this working properly.

[Adam Kiss]

Hi Michelle,

welcome to the forums.

As for your problems – as most of CMS, this one too should be installed in root directory of domain. If you use Mac OS X SL apache, you can solve your problems by creating virtual hosts. You can do this either by hand (that does get tedious if you have more than one) or by other programs:

• 
   
• Nice guide of setting up VHosts
   
• VirtualHostX – Very nice app (paid for 19EUR) to manage your vhosts very easily
  

Now, if you've configured everything correctly (and it isn't very hard , you should be able to visit 'localhost/-michelle/processwire/' under whatever virtual name you gave it (e.g. portfolio.local)

I personally set every domain I work on as 'ldomain-name.dev', so if I want to go to original domain, it doesn't pop-up in history as more often visited one

[ryan]

Adam has good suggestions, but I just wanted to correct on one point. ProcessWire doesn't care whether it's run from the root of a domain or a subdirectory. It should not matter. I run most of mine from subdirectories on my local machine.

What I am wondering is if the "~" might be a problem, as ProcessWire does not allow that character in URLs. Though I can tell you what to change to allow it (it's in the /.htaccess file). I'm just not certain if that's applicable here since the ~michele dir isn't managed by PW.

But if you want to give it a try, edit your /.htaccess file, and replace line 29 by adding the "~" character in it:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} "^[-_.a-zA-Z0-9/~]*$"

Note I added it right before the closing "]" bracket.

If that doesn't help, then try editing your /index.php file and change this line (line #38):

$rootURL = isset($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']) ? substr($rootPath, strlen(rtrim($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'], '/'))) . '/' : '/';

To this:

$rootURL = "/~michele/process/"; 

Also add the "localhost" part if that is actually part of the address that appears in your browser bar. I'm assuming that is there as a hostname though, in which case it doesn't need to be included.

If that solves it, let me know. This is a known, but rare issue, and I'd like someone to test a fix.

[ryan]

I think that both Adam and I are using MAMP on localhost. If you are on a Mac, you may want to try out MAMP too. It's free, and much better than what you get with OS X by default.

[MishieMoo]

Hey Ryan, thanks for the tips. Changing the line to /~michele/process/ did the trick! But now my admin panel 404's. It's just supposed to be /admin, correct? Edit: Turns out none of the links work now...but all the resources show up fine.

Thanks for the MAMP suggestion. If I start doing more PHP development I'll definitely download it!

[ryan]

The admin is actually /processwire/ by default.

But if you are getting 404s for all the links, that means mod_rewrite probably isn't active/installed with your apache. Mod_rewrite is something you'll find on almost all web hosting accounts, but probably not on a standard os x web server, which I'm guessing is fairly stripped down. I'd say install mamp and you'll never look back... Takes about 2 mins to install, and will set you up with an environment consistent to what you'd find on a web host. ProcessWire requires mod_rewrite, but not all cms's do. Though all will be much better off with it, as you'll be stuck with ugly urls without it.