Overview

Have you ever come across an error on your MAMP homepage that says: Forbidden You don’t have permission to access /MAMP/ on this server. Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) PHP/5.2.11 DAV/2 Server at localhost Port XXXX. Fear no more I have what possibly could be the solution to your problem.

Tech Specs

• All Browsers
• MAC OSX
• WordPress: Version 2.7
• MAMP: Version 1.8.2

The Problem

You have installed wordpress on your computer and are using MAMP as your local server to test your websites. You go on to the MAMP homepage just to find an error:

You don’t have permission to access /MAMP/ on this server. Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) PHP/5.2.11 DAV/2 Server at localhost Port XXXX

There are many different ways to solve this problem but what the actual problem is that there was a .htaccess file that got saved on your hard drive. When installing WordPress, WordPress sometimes saves a .htaccess file. This for some strange reason causes the homepage on your MAMP server to throw an error.

The Solution

First thing to do is you need to locate the .htaccess file. All files, starting with a period, are hidden in a UNIX system. There are a few ways you can show hidden files. The first is you can use Terminal to show hidden files or you can download some software for free that allows you to quickly show or hide hidden files.

If you want to do it the easy way I suggest downloading Houdini. This software will allow you to easily show hidden files on your computer.

If your not too fond of downloading software for a small task, then you could use terminal to show hidden files. Go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal and open. In the console window type the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

This should show all hidden files in Finder. If you want to hide all the files just enter the same commands in the console window except replace TRUE with FALSE.

Now that you have found the .htaccess file, you can go ahead and delete it. Restart Mamp and all is good.