Webhosting databases have become a necessity for hosting many websites today. The features that allow such great website interactions with viewers have made it necessary for server installed databases. This makes it unnecessary for exchanges of information between the website owner’s computer and the hosting site. That makes viewer interaction faster and more reliable with webhosting packages maintaining databases at the server. Setting up these databases appears to be a bit confusing for some users.
There has been a recent abundance of new bloggers in this day and age and databases are a required part of their operation. The databases are the storage area for blog settings, format, all posts and information exchanged between the users and the website that the blog operates. This server storage area manages all this information and eliminates any unwieldy interaction required between the blog owner’s computer disk storage and the website itself. Some blogging installations will set up databases automatically for you but typical this is an operation you must perform yourself.
In the event you are asked to create your own database and database user, you should not let this terminology have you asking “what do they mean”. There are really three basic elements required to set up a database. You will need to create the database and create a user with password access. There is often one more step that can easily be forgotten. You must associate the user with the database.
Most cpanels (hosting provider control panel) are alike and will guide you easily through the process. First you will need to go to the section labelled MySQL. and select “create database”. You will be asked to give the database a name. This can be anything you wish. They usually require it to be a minimum and maximum number of characters. Don’t be overly concerned what you name it. The key point is to write down that name for later reference. Be sure to note it exactly as they show you. They usually add some extension to the name you provide. You might require it for your software installation. Next you will need to create a database user name. Again as above, the username can be anything you wish and be sure to document this information for further use. The last step is to assign the named user privileges to access the database. Look for this step and assign all user rights to that user name.
In the database creation process, it will be displayed for your information somewhere, the location where the files are stored at you hosting provider. This almost always defaults to something similar to “localhost”. Most software packages also default to this. On occasion, some hosting providers will provide a different address for those files. Make note of the location before you leave the database creation process. That’s all there is to it. Your database is ready to use. You have a user, a database, a password and database files location.