Install phpMyAdmin on Snow Leopard Server

• Download the latest version from - http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php
• Get the .bz2 version for small size and automatic extraction with a simple double-click of the file
• Double click to extract the archive contents, rename the extracted folder pma, or pma<version> if versions are important. In this example the folder is named pma324 indicating version 3.2.4 of phpMyAdmin.
• Move the renamed archive into /Library/Webserver/Documents/ on the server..
  
• Change ownership to root on the pma324 folder: sudo chown -R root /Library/Webserver/Documents/pma324 --enter the admin user password when prompted.
• Launch web browser to site. http://<yoursite>/pma324/ substituting the actual site name or ip address for <yoursite>..
  
• Enter the user name and password for a valid mysql user that has previously been set up on the machine <link to mysql here>, into the login fields.
• A web GUI displaying all databases and schema to which the logged in user has access appears, in this case root user, so full access..
  
• At first login, at the bottom of the screen, is a blowfish warning which must be heeded..
  
• To set the blowfish passphrase using terminal: sudo pico /Library/Webserver/Documents/pma324/config.sample.inc.php then enter machine password when prompted.
• 
• Still in the pico editor in the Terminal application, control-o (write-Out), save the file as config.inc.php when prompted. Take the .sample out of the file name in other words. Then control-x to eXit the pico editor.
• Close or log out of the phpMyAdmin web page, then log back in to the http://<yoursite>/pma324 to verify that the blowfish_secret error no longer appears. The problem loading the mcrypt extension is long standing, and generally not a grave concern.

Troubleshooting

Most common problem, the default path to web documents, /Library/Webserver/Documents is changed so webserver may take advantage of higher speed external disk or RAID. If get an error about object not found in the browser, check the logs for the web service on Snow Leopard Server to divine the actual path the Apache2 web server is using to serve files.