Trying Craft Client or Pro on Mac OS X Before Buying

Craft allows you to try Craft Client and Craft Pro before buying them, by running your site from the host name craft.dev or a subdomain such as site1.craft.dev (link). However, it's not immediately obvious what "running your site from craft.dev" means.

This post explains how to run your site from craft.dev on Mac OS X using MAMP and Sequel Pro.

1 — Install Craft on MAMP

• The first step is to install Craft Personal. These instructions explain how to do that on Mac OS X using MAMP and Sequel Pro.

2 — Create a directory for the craft.dev site

• Go to /Applications/MAMP/htdocs
• Create a new folder trybeforebuy/public/ (or whatever you want to call it)  
• Copy contents of the htdocs folder there, including the hidden .htaccess file
• Edit $craftpath in index.php to be '../../../craft'

3 — Setup craft.dev as an Apache virtual host 

• Follow these video instructions 
• Use 'craft.dev' (no quotes) as the ServerName
• Use "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/trybeforebuy/public/" (with quotes) as the DocumentRoot and Directory 

4 — Change the Web port to 80 from 8888

• Open MAMP
• Switch to the Ports tab
• Click on the “Set the Web & MySQL ports to 80 & 3306” button

5 — Access the new Dashboard 

• Go to http://craft.dev/admin/login 

6 — Upgrade your Craft installation

• Click on the "Show me" link in the "Upgrade Craft to take your site to the next level" box at the bottom of your Dashboard
• Click on the "Test" link by Craft Client or Client Pro, whichever you want to explore

That's it!

This post describes how to switch between the different versions--Craft Personal, Craft Client, and Craft Pro--if you want to do that.