I recently updated how I set up my web development environments. Before, I’d set up Apache, MySQL, and PHP separately. This time, I went with one of the many WAMP packages – The Uniform Server.

I like it – it’s compact, quick to set up, and has nice configuration pages – while still allowing you to dig easily into the config files and error files. That’s what allowed me to adjust the Apache FollowSymLinks option and FileInfo directive so that I could use pretty Permalinks for WordPress.

On the Mac side, I’ve had good experiences with MAMP PRO.