If you are like me on a shared hosting server chances are your web hosting account has cPanel or some other administration panel through which you can create/delete MySQL databases (DBs)/DB users. But you will not be able to:

a. Take selective backup. i.e., backup of only some tables in a DB
b. Execute queries. You might have seen that some scripts give you a .sql file that needs to be ‘executed’ in your DB so the tables in it get created/populated.

Enter phpMyAdmin to the rescue. It is a nice web interface to control your MySQL DB. Most hosts already provide phpMyAdmin but it’s usually out-dated.

This is a step-by-step tutorial for installation of phpMyAdmin on your shared hosting space using FTP access. (Shell access fastens the process, but am not covering that here now). You are going to download the needed files on your computer (Windows, I would guess), upload to your UNIX run web host and set everything up.

1. Download the latest version from http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php. The latest version is at the top. You can download the .zip file.

2. Extract the contents of the .zip file using a program like winrar.

3. [Optional] You may want to delete unneeded language files. This saves time while uploading. Go into ‘lang’ folder and delete all files except a) all the .sh files and b) the three .php files having names starting w/ ‘english’.

4. In this tutorial scope, we are going to have phpMyAdmin access and control all the tables in a single database that you are going to create.

a. Create a DB using cPanel

b. Create MySQL username and a password for this user

c. Assign all privileges to this user to access the DB

5. Download config.inc.php zipped and extract to get config.inc.php file. Place it along with all the other content. Open it in a text editor like EditPlus and edit these lines:

a. line 55:

  $cfg[’Servers’][$i][’host’] = ‘localhost’; // MySQL hostname or IP address

Usually it is ‘localhost’.

b. line 62:

  $cfg[’Servers’][$i][’controluser’] = ‘MySQL_user’; // MySQL control user 
  settings

Enter MySQL user you created in step 4 b.

c. line 64:

  $cfg[’Servers’][$i][’controlpass’] = ‘MySQL_pass’; // access to the 
  “mysql/user”

Enter MySQL user’s password that you created in step 4 b.

d. Save the file and close it.

6. Log into your web space using a FTP client and create a directory, say phpmyadmin under public_html. Upload all the content into the directory created.

7. Installation is complete. Simply point your browser to the directory where you installed phpMyAdmin and you should be able to start using it.

8. Important: Password protect the directory where you installed phpMyAdmin or else anyone will be able to access it! You can do that using the admin panel that your host provides.

By Sridhar Katakam

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