title: Installing Laravel on MAMP
body: <p>I downloaded the <a href="https://github.com/laravel/laravel" rel="nofollow">latest version of Laravel</a> from Github, unzipped it, and then placed it inside of the htdocs folder in MAMP. MAMP is running PHP version 5.4.10 and therefore fulfills Laravel's requirement of PHP >= 5.3.7. I tried using the terminal to install composer by entering:</p>
  
  <pre><code>curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And was greeted with an error reading:</p>
  
  <pre><code> #!/usr/bin/env php
   Some settings on your machine make Composer unable to work properly.
   Make sure that you fix the issues listed below and run this script again:
  
   The detect_unicode setting must be disabled.
   Add the following to the end of your `php.ini`:
   detect_unicode = Off
  
   A php.ini file does not exist. You will have to create one.
   If you can not modify the ini file, you can also run `php -d option=value` to modify ini     values on the fly. You can use -d multiple times.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I try to load </p>
  
  <pre><code>http://localhost:8888/laravel/public/
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>in my browser, the PHP error log shows </p>
  
  <pre><code>05-Sep-2013 16:57:03 Europe/Berlin] PHP Fatal error:  require(): Failed opening required '/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/laravel/bootstrap/../vendor/autoload.php' (include_path='.:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.4.10/lib/php') in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/laravel/bootstrap/autoload.php on line 17
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have a feeling that this error has a fairly simple solution, but as I'm very new to Laravel I need to be pointed in the right direction in regards to solving this.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>