Recent versions of macOS now use zsh as the default command line shell. I typically use the bash shell on Linux servers, so I prefer using it on my Mac. This post is going to describe how to switch from the zsh shell to the bash shell. Before Starting You should be familiar with using the macOS Terminal command line. We will be using Homebrew to install the latest bash version.

I have been creating a Website Development Environment on my Mac, which is currently running macOS Big Sur. I have added a MAMP (LAMP when running on Linux) stack to support various website development tools, such as WordPress. A MAMP stack is based on the macOS operating system, the Apache 2 web server, the MySQL database management system, and the PHP scripting language. You can easily install a MAMP stack by installing a MAMP App as described by the WordPress Codex, Installing WordPress Locally on Your Mac with MAMP .

Over the last few months, I have experimented with different hosting arrangements, WordPress, and Hugo CMS configurations. Now it’s time to start creating content to see if I can create a viable site. To that end, I want to start by writing about my efforts to create a local website development environment on my Mac. As a foundation, I have chosen Homebrew to install most of the software that I am using.

I am going to show you a few twists and turns for using SSH to log into a Linux server from macOS. I am going to use my Pair Networks shared host as an example. I like having shell access to my web host, which is one of the great features that Pair offers. In addition to SSH, you can also use SFTP to transfer files. Once you have set up SSH, SFTP should work automatically if you so desire to use it.

This post describes how I configured Postfix on my Mac to relay outbound email via Google’s SMTP service. Why? I am creating a local website development environment where PHP applications may generate email messages for contact forms or notifications. For example, after installing WordPress, it generates an email message announcing a successful install. However, we can use the built-in mail command to run a simple test after we complete our configuration work.

This is a followup post to my earlier Configure Apache and PHP-FPM on macOS post. With the addition of MySQL to my Mac website development environment, I can now install Content Management Systems, such as WordPress that require a database system to function. My original post supports static website development (for example, Grav ). My current website host, Pair Networks , uses MySQL versions 5.6 and 5.7 (seems to default to 5.