MAMP multi-site installation, where to put files?

Subscribing.

You seem to be on the right track. But you are missing several important steps. Specifically you need to edit your hosts file and your sites.php file.

For the benefit of others I will start at the beginning and carefully go through all of the steps that I took to run a Drupal Multi-Site local install with MAMP.

I have several client sites that I develop for. Running local versions of these sites can be messy if they are all running discrete instances of Drupal. Developing all of my sites from one installation makes it much easier to manage Core and module upgrades. It takes up less space and helps keep things tidy. Drupal 7 makes this process a bit easier to do with the "sites.php" file. I suggest reading the comments of this file at the appropriate step.

This is the procedure for running local Drupal 7 Multi-site on MAMP 1.9.x for OS X 10.5.x and up. This assumes you have Administrator access to your system. Were going to make MAMP become the default Web Server for localhost and also define localhost as "dev." We will set up 3 client sites running from one local Drupal Installation. I will name these sites "client1.dev, client2.dev, client3.dev" as examples. Replace these names with your own site names where appropriate.

Let's begin with MAMP.

1. Download and Install MAMP in your Applications Directory.
2. By default MAMP uses it's own "htdocs" directory as the root level of it's Web Server. We're going to adjust that in a moment. But "out of the box" this is the folder that MAMP expects you will serve your Web pages from.
   [Applications/MAMP/htdocs]
3. If you have not done so yet, Download the most recent release of Drupal and extract it in the htdocs folder
   [Applications/MAMP/htdocs/Drupal-7]. At this time you might change the name of your Drupal 7 Folder. I named mine D7
4. We want MAMP's Apache to use port 80 so that we will not have to append port numbers to our local URLS when browsing. In Mac System Prefs turn off Web Sharing. This will disable your "Sites" folder as a Web server and will allow MAMP's Apache to become your localhost server. There may be reasons not to do this [if you are running other site platforms in your sites directory for instance using Apache from OS X] If that's the case you can skip this step and the next step.
5. Launch MAMP and open MAMP Preferences from the MAMP Control Panel. Then change the Apache port to port "80." Again, this step is optional.
6. In MAMP preferences select Apache tab and set your document root to be your primary Drupal Instalation mentioned above. In my instance I created a clean Drupal 7 Install inside of MAMP's htdocs and named the directory "D7." [/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/D7]
7. Restart your MAMP servers.
8. Next we need to edit the hosts file. This is an "invisible file" and will require using Terminal. If you are not familiar, no worries. It's easy. Just step carefully. Open Terminal Utility [Applications > Utilities > Terminal] and enter the command:
   sudo nano /etc/hosts
   Enter your admin password at prompt. This will open the hosts file in the Nano Text Editor inside of Terminal.
9. We want the default localhost address to recognize all of your Drupal Site addresses. We also want to recognize ".dev" as a localhost server.

   We're going to add each of your Drupal sites to the Host Database. Edit the file to read:

   # Host Database
   #
   # localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
   # when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
   ##
   127.0.0.1       localhost
   127.0.0.1       dev
   127.0.0.1       client1.dev
   127.0.0.1       client2.dev
   127.0.0.1       client3.dev
   255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
   ::1             localhost
   fe80::1%lo0     localhost
   

10. Save and exit nano by typing control-x. y=yes at prompt. return
11. If you are not familliar with Terminal or the Command Line, now would be a very good time to quit the Terminal Application.
12. Now we are on to Drupal. In the Drupal Sites folder create a Directory for each of your Client sites.

    client1.dev
    client2.dev
    client3.dev

13. Place a copy of "default.settings.php" in each client directory.
14. In each directory copy "default.settings.php" and rename it to "settings.php." Do this in every client directory so that each directory contains "default.settings.php" and "settings.php"
15. In the Drupal Sites fodler there is a file called "example.sites.php." Copy this file and rename it "sites.php" and keep it in the Sites folder along with "example.sites.php."
16. Open the "sites.php" file and read the comments. This information may help you understand what Drupal is up to when it receives a URL request from localhost.
17. At the bottom of the "sites.php" create the aliasing as follows and save.
    

      $sites['client1.dev'] = 'client1.dev'; 
      $sites['client2.dev'] = 'client2.dev';   
      $sites['client3.dev'] = 'client3.dev';      
    

18. Were almost there. Now it's time to create Databases. Open The Start Page from the MAMP control panel, access phpMyAdmin page. MAMP sets both your MySQL admin name and password as "root" by default. Obviously this is not secure and you would be advised to change it. Whatever you choose, you will need your MySQL admin name and password for the drupal install of each site.
19. To change your MySQL Password, or create other Users, Access the "Privileges" tab from phpMyAdmin. If you intend to change your ID and Password do this before you create Drupal Databases.
20. From the phpMyAdmin primary screen [the localhost link at the top of the page] you can create a new database for each of your client sites. Just select a name and enter. You will need to remember this for the next step.
21. If all is well you should be able to open a browser and enter the address "client1.dev" or "client2.dev" or "client3.dev" and you will see the installation screen for a new drupal site. [If you skipped steps 4 and 5 you will need to append port:8888 to each URL. ie: "client2.dev:8888"]. Enter the corresponding database names and your admin login and MySQL password. Run the install script for each site and you should be all set. You can now enter any of your client.dev URLS and you will be directed to the local site. You are now running discrete Drupal sites from one Drupal Core!

    Stating the obvious; When you add sites in the future you will need to edit your host file and your sites.php file. You will need new Sites folders as well.

I hope this was helpful.

Have fun!

Doren

worked for me like a charm, 2moro will try it on a rackspace ubuntu server