Basic

• Name
  The site name must be unique within MAMP PRO. A reverse domain naming scheme is often practical for easy identification (e.g. use info.mamp.development instead of development.mamp.info). The unreversed name may conflict with an outside domain name. The site name may only contain letters and/or numbers, as well as dashes (”-”); but it may not begin or end with a ”-” character. Names are not case-sensitive. The name of a site can be up to 254 characters long.

  To open your site in your default browser, click on the “Open” button to the right of the site name field. This button is only active when the servers are running. The “Open in” button allows you to open the site’s website in a specific browser.

• PHP version
  Select which PHP version to use for this site.

  If you select the default PHP version, MAMP PRO will automatically update this setting if you choose a new default version in the settings. Select a fixed version to prevent MAMP PRO from changing the PHP version automatically.

  An example: The default version is 8.3.1. You have set “site-1” to PHP version “Default (8.3.1)”, “site-2” to “7.4.27” and “site-3” to “7.1.33”. If you set the default PHP version to “7.0.33” in the PHP settings, the PHP version of site “site-1” is automatically changed to this version. The other two sites will not be changed.

  To view the configuration of the currently selected PHP version, click the arrow button to the right of the select box.

• Web Server
  For each site you can select which web server — Apache or Nginx — should be used to serve your website.

  Special case: the “localhost” site

  In the case of the “localhost” site, both radio buttons (Apache and Nginx) are enabled but locked (non-editable). This is because the Apache web server must always be running for “localhost” to provide certain administrative tools (such as phpMyAdmin). Nginx becomes available for “localhost” only if at least one other site exists in which Nginx has been selected as the web server. In that scenario, the content of the “localhost” site may also be served via Nginx — on the port defined for Nginx.

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• Site folder
  The site folder is the directory in which all your files (.html, .php, .py, …) and directories belonging to the selected site are located.

  If you have content that belongs to the site but should not be publicly accessible, store it in the site folder and define a subfolder as the “Document root”. This way, you can store your own PHP classes or frameworks in a better-protected location while still using them conveniently.

  You can change the permissions of the selected site folder using the permissions panel. This can be accessed via the menu “Site -> Edit Permission…”.

  

  Caution

  Do not use the folder /Applications/MAMP or any subfolder in this directory. Instead, use a subfolder in your ~/Sites/ directory. This will keep your content separate from the application data of MAMP and MAMP PRO.

  Caution

  Do not use an alias (symbolic link) as your site folder that points to the /Applications/MAMP/htdocs folder.

• Document root
  The “Document root” is the directory that is publicly accessible via the browser. You have the following options for this:

  • same as site folder
    If you select this option, the “site folder” and “document root” are identical and therefore the content in the “site folder” can be accessed by the browser.

  • subfolder
    However, you can also specify a direct subfolder (of the site folder you have selected) as the “Document root”. Only the content in this directory will be accessible to the browser.

• Extras
  With MAMP PRO Extras you can install a content management system in just a few clicks. Press the “Add…” button to install an Extras package.

  Note

  We may add or remove extras from time to time.

  

  MAMP PRO provides the following Extras:

  • WordPress
  • Drupal
  • Joomla
  • MediaWiki
  • phpBB
  • webEdition

  If a listed extra cannot be installed, it is marked with a red arrow. Click this symbol for information on why installation is not currently possible.

  

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• Show in “MAMP Viewer” (iOS)
  Allows your site to be viewed in the MAMP Viewer. You can only enable this option if your host name ends in “.local”. If this is not the case and you activate this checkbox, you will be asked whether the name of your host should be changed accordingly.

  

• Show in NAMO
  For a site to resolve to NAMO, it must be marked as a NAMO site in MAMP PRO.

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• AI support
  Grant an AI application access to this site so that you can have it edit code, query databases, or run WP-CLI commands directly — without copying or uploading content manually. Currently, only Claude for Desktop by Anthropic is supported.

  • Grant AI apps access to site’s files…
    Allows the AI application to access all files and folders inside the site folder.
  • …and database(s)
    Additionally allows the AI application to access the databases assigned to the site. This option can only be enabled if file access is also enabled.

  Note

  As long as Claude for Desktop is not installed, both options are not available.

  For details — including data flow, the actions an AI can perform, and how to remove access — see AI Support.