The Best Guide to Hosting a Website on Mavericks

Question

Hi All,
I'm brand new to Apple products. Besides a company issued iPhone, my first piece of Apple hardware is a Mac Mini I purchased two weeks ago, and I'm on my third full wipe and restart after a six hour fail today.
I want to host a WordPress family website from my house on my new Mac Mini. (I have a HostGator hosting account for other sites, but I prefer to host this one on my own) I've already been doing this for the past three years on a Synology NAS. I've also managed to set up test hosts on linux machines for fun using lamp and webmin, and even by installing the pieces one at a time. I don't even know Linux that well, but I managed to figure it out all quick enough.
However, I am not having much luck with this Mac Mini. Perhaps I'm trying to take on too much by learning the ropes and also trying to set up a website at the same time, but hey, I'm stubborn, sue me.
I bought the server app from the get go and I'm running Mavericks, but I think Server only confused me further with the different web root paths. I was able to get close on my second set up. I installed MySQL and phpMyAdmin, created a db, dropped my WordPress files into the locaton of the default website, and was able to install and log into WordPress locally.
Then it all went to **** while fixing little issues, and I unfortunately couldn't pinpoint what screwed it all up (my bad), and changing things back (permissions, apache settings, etc.) didn't seem to undo what I messed up either. Hence, the wipe.
So, my questions are...is server worth it, or will it just complicate my learning curve? Is there a guide out there you can recommend that I could follow that takes you from start to finish, with or without server? There are some great resources out there, but chances are I've read them and I've still had issues because it did not exactly match what I saw. (It's like there are small pieces left over of other versions in these guides or something) If they show up on the first few pages of a Google search, chances are I've seen and read or at least used them as a reference guide. I'm still open to following one again though if it's worked for a number of you.
This third upcoming try I'm not going to install server unless there's a guide to follow that specifically includes or requires it. What can you recommend for a free guide or blog post out there? What worked for you?
Thanks! I appreciate your thoughts and guidance.
~Troubled Newb~

Answer 1

You do not need OS X Server to run a web server. It will probably make things overly complicated.
Unfortunately, Apple removed the simple "turn on web server" switch in System Preferences some versions of OS X ago, but the frameworks are still in place with a little Terminal help. Here's one how-to:
http://igerry.com/desktop/apple-os/enable-apache-web-server-os-x-mavericks.html
It sounds like you already have the MySQL / WordPress stuff down, but post back if you get stuck on specific things. You might want to use the Mavericks forum rather than the Mac Mini one since these issues are not hardware-specific.
Matt