Noob: MySQL ?

[st3ady]

Hey there,

 

I am a new user here, I have taken up the task of building my father's business a website. I was pointed to here by a friend and OS Commerce looks like an amazing free answer to getting this done! I am excited to get started. I downloaded it and read a bit through the documentation.

 

I have never used MySQL before, and am confused where to start. I understand it is a database, but I don't know which program I need to create/edit these databases. I saw in the documentation a program titled "phpMyAdmin" and downloaded it, but have not yet extracted the zip. It looks complicated. Is there any tutorials you can point me to on creating my database file? Will this be the file that contains all the information of the products (price, quantity, descriptions) or are there several database files which link together?

 

Thank you very much, any help is greatly appreciated! :D

[kgt]

phpMyAdmin is one of many ways to administer a MySQL database. If you're familiar with Microsoft Access, it's probably the most intuitive tool for you.

 

If you already have PHP and Apache working, and can verify that MySQL is working, then you only need to extract the phpMyAdmin zip file into a subfolder of your webroot.

 

If none of that makes sense to you, then I recommend installing XAMPP, which will install and make sure all these things are working correctly:

 

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html#646

 

(I am assuming you're trying to install this on your local machine for testing and development. If you're already putting this on a hosted site, then your host almost certainly has phpMyAdmin available to you through your control panel.)

[sock2me]

hi there,

I'm new to this board and am very new to MySQL and phpMyAdmin as well but - I spent a ton of time over the last two weeks working on this so I may actually be able to help you (you and I probably speak the same language as newbies). But I will need to know what system you are on (MAC? PC?)

 

And what language will you be building your Dad's site in? If you are going to use PHP, there are some Fantastic resources out there. I would encourage you to get a book. I'm very happy with my "Foundation, PHP for Dreamweaver 8" book, but I'm using Dreamweaver so it makes a lot of sense to me. Will you be using a WYSIWYG like Dreamweaver, GoLive or FrontPage?

 

I spent a lot of time on boards all over the net trying to figure out what to do - and each tutorial was slightly different. My problem lay in the permissions - setting the permissions is not hard, but it's not obvious and you need to do it to both MySQL and phpMyAdmin so those two programs will communicate.

 

Did you see the last person who posted to your note - it is important to know if you are setting this up locally to test. If your ISP has MySQL and phpMyAdmin AND will allow you to test your pages 'remotely' - you don't really need to set up a testing environment yourself - use their's.

 

If you are on a MAC, I will send you some links and share any info I might have with you ok?

[wellandweb]

I reckon if you are real new to mySQL / php and are looking to set up an online shop then you may be better off starting by using a hosting company that offers osCommerce ready installed on a web server.

 

If you search on Google you will find plenty of companies out there that offer this

 

( me being one of them )

 

Regards

Simon

[ksl8313]

although I experimented on my computer many times,

i think it is easier (although more time-consuming) if you just install sql and php admin on your webhost.

For instance, my webhost deals with installing of osC, SQL, etc on a single click, which was very neat. then you can just work from there.

have fun!