phpMyAdmin is an powerful tool to help folks manage their MySQL databases. Generally this tool is well documented and there is an active forum if folks want to ask questions to the community.

Setting up Sub-Account Permissions

MySQL (which is the database which is controlled by phpMyAdmin) has a great many levels of permissions which allows a lot of flexibility for securing your data.

If you have a number of databases which you would like to administer, you can do this under a single MySQL user account. However, you can also give access to specific databases and tables to different user accounts. (The following assumes that you have set up the new MySQL user account.) To allow other accounts access to these databases, use the GRANT SQL command: http://www.mysql.com/doc/G/R/GRANT.html

eg. log in to phpMyAdmin as 'YourMainMySQLAccount' then issue the command:

GRANT ALTER,SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,DROP ON MyNewSQLDatabase.* TO YourNewMySQLAccount;

or for tables

GRANT ALTER,SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,DROP ON SomeNewTable TO YourNewMySQLAccount;

in any of the 'issue SQL command' boxes.

Setting MySQL Account Passwords

phpMyAdmin also allows you to change your MySQL account passwords, you may want to change the password on your account using the 'SET PASSWORD' SQL command: http://www.mysql.com/doc/S/E/SET_OPTION.html

eg. log into phpMyAdmin as 'YourMySQLAccount' and then issue the command:

SET PASSWORD = PASSWORD('newpassword');

Backing up Your Data

phpMyAdmin has a 'dump' option which allows you to download the entire SQL of the database. By selecting a specific table you can also download one specific table as well. To do this you will need to select the 'Structure and data' option. If you want to save it to your hard drive (rather than just view the data), you will also need to select the 'Send' option. Having access to the raw MySQL data is also an easy way to do a global and replace on all of the content of your site or to move databases.

Security Reminder

Often php scripts will contain critical MySQL information within them. To ensure the integrity of your data it is important that you be careful with the availability of this information. Configuration files with MySQL data in them should not be visible via the web. To keep your data safe, consider using one of the following options:

• Store your data in a directory which is not visible through the web
• Place a password on the directory which contain your MySQL info
• Save your configuration file with a file extension which is parsed (ie. .php) so that no critical data is displayed via the browser

Large File

Sometimes you may have large database tables which will time out with phpMySQL. If this happens you can use the following from the shell prompt on your server:

mysql -h localhost -u username -p database