MAMP stands for Macintosh-Apache-MySQL-PHP and is a software package that lets you run the AMP parts on your M part without the hassle of installing them all separately – and yes, it can be quite a hassle to install all the parts, or even impossible if you don’t know what you’re doing.

WAMP is still AMP but for W – Windows. I can also recommend XAMPP (the extra P is for Perl) which runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris (I’ve seen more movies by this name than users) – it also has great integration with Eclipse, if you use that IDE.

There are a couple of really great video tutorials on Lullabot that show you how to install MAMP on Mac OS X and WAMP on Windows XP. Click on the view or download tab there. It’ll walk you through things and hold your hand all the way.

Go ahead, download a package, it’s really painless and easy.

UPDATE: It seems to me that WAMP, upon further examination, is less flexible than XAMPP. I’d only advocated WAMP because there was a video tutorial of it, but save yourself a headache and go for XAMPP instead.