Installing Drupal

I'm trying to install a copy of my website on my computer, to test before upgrading Drupal (from 6.16). The tutorials I found were not exactly what I needed, and I'm a beginner at this. I gave it a try, but have hit a brick wall.

Here's what I have done:

I read Getting Started section. I thought it might be good idea to have a local test environment (or should I go right ahead to create on Host Gator...). I saw download for Aquia Drupal. Is this different from Drupal? If I am trying to teach myself Drupal, what is the right software to install and get started? I am looking to use Urban Market Place module. Not sure if that makes any difference. Thank you.

Im going through the instructions to install multisite feature (i have n ew, sperate site i want to make using drupal), but i dont understand this part of the instructions...

Adjust the permissions of the new site directory, and grant write permissions on the configuration file

Can anybody please help?

Robert

I'm an absolut newbie into Drupal. Today I started installing Drupal 6.20. I think I now have an account.

The problem is though that I'm not able to login with my password and username. If I request a new password it says:

- warning: mail() [function.mail]: Failed to connect to mailserver at "localhost" port 25, verify your "SMTP" and "smtp_port" setting in php.ini or use ini_set() in C:\AppServ\www\drupal-6.19\includes\mail.inc on line 193.

- Unable to send e-mail. Please contact the site administrator if the problem persists.

Apologies if this is posted in the wrong section, this is my first post and I'm guessing here! This is my first website, let alone first website using Drupal, so forgive my ignorance!

OK, so I've developed a small site locally using MAMP on OS X, managed to get the whole thing live but I am really struggling with the file system settings. I'm getting this message on the Status report:

Hi all

I'm facing a trouble in my server that if there are alot of requests on the Apache server the site displays "Site-offline" message and I have to restart Apache to go live again. I don't know were exactly is the problem if it is from Apache or Postgres (which is my Drupal database) or if there are any modules I installed that cause this problem or if it Drupal that is causing this problem. Please reply to my request as soon as you can.

note : in some cases alot of memory is consumed and in other cases CPU is used alot.

thanks