local wordpress setup on mac osx lion

1. Download WordPress to /Users/yourusername/Sites folder
2. Extract package to a folder name to be your wordpress install. I called it wordpress
3. Setup permissions on the wp-content folder so that wordpress can modify files there. I simply gave ownership to _www group.

   sudo chown -R _www wp-content

4. Update /etc/apache2/users/yourusername.conf

   <Directory "/Users/yourusername/Sites/">
       Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
       AllowOverride All AuthConfig
       Order allow,deny
       Allow from all
   </Directory>

5. .htaccess
6. Restart apache for chaneges to take effect:

   sudo apachectl restart

7. Edit wp-config.php to add this constant so wordpress will not ask your FTP credentials while installing plugins.

   define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');

8. Create database for this wordpress installation in phpmyadmin.
9. Create user for this database.
10. Follow the 5 minute setup instructions localhost/~yourusername/wordpress/readme.html

Optional  Steps

1. Update php version to 5.5 since Mac OSX lion comes with PHP 5.2 out of the box.
2. Update Apache to 2.4 since Max OSX come with Apache 2.2 out of the box.

Hope this helps.