I’m currently using MAMP for local WordPress and PHP work on OS X. It works great, except for a tendency to bug out when starting up again after a full moon (unknown reason). So if you get the “Error: Could not connect to MySQL server!” notice, here’s a fix:
- Quit MAMP
- Open the terminal and type:
killall -9 mysqld - Restart MAMP
That should do it. If it’s still not working, this forum thread has more details.