Create a Magento Admin User

I copied the local.xml file from one magento to another and changed the database. Afterwards I accessed the magento installation http://shop.dev. Magento run all his update and install scripts.

Afterwards I had two problems:

1. I had no admin user. The solution, how to create one I found here, thanks to Volodymyr Vygovskyi

2. I had no base_url set:

   {{base_url}} is not recommended to use in a production environment to declare the Base Unsecure URL / Base Secure URL. It is highly recommended to change this value in your Magento configuration.

Jerome Dennis wrote in his blog how to change this, but when we have a look into

// app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Config.php:982
// Mage_Core_Model_Config::getDistroServerVars()
    if (isset($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']) && isset($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'])) {
            $secure = (!empty($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && ($_SERVER['HTTPS']!='off')) || $_SERVER['SERVER_PORT']=='443';
            $scheme = ($secure ? 'https' : 'http') . '://' ;

            $hostArr = explode(':', $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);
            $host = $hostArr[0];
            $port = isset(
                $hostArr[1]) && (!$secure && $hostArr[1]!=80 || $secure && $hostArr[1]!=443
            ) ? ':'.$hostArr[1] : '';
            $path = Mage::app()->getRequest()->getBasePath();

            $baseUrl = $scheme.$host.$port.rtrim($path, '/').'/';
        } else {
            $baseUrl = 'http://localhost/';
        }

we see, that this setting is great for development. We can just use magento without caring about the URL.