The Mac users out there have a little bit of a head start on most of the rest of us these days - they already have a distribution of PHP and Apache installed with their machines when they get them (well, with OS X). Fortunately, this also makes it easier for them to install some of the web-based apps we all know and love, like )Wordpress, and this new tutorial is here to show you how to set it all up...

Of the many options out there, many people choose to run their own blogging software as opposed to a managed service. WordPress is another mature, capable and free blogging engine that is very popular with many bloggers (like its founding developer, Matt Mullenweg) and rapidly gaining in popularity across the Web. WordPress is an excellent choice for a personal or professional blog, and the price is right, too. This tutorial will show you how to install WordPress 1.5.11 on OS X 10.4 Tiger.

As previously mentioned, since most of the install work was done when OS X was installed, you're really only setting up the software. There is one little hitch that might throw some of the non-techies out there - installing MySQL. You have to have it to get Wordpress to work correctly. Thankfully, they go so far as to give screenshots of the terminal screens to step you through that. Once you've finished that, you're almost home free! Then it's on to enabling PHP and firing up Wordpress.

I recently tried Wordpress for a simple blog that I was working on, and I have to admit, I do see the massive appeal that it has. I was up, running, and blogging on it within 20 minutes. Now, if I can just figure out the templating...