Installing and Configuring phpMyAdmin

In the last post, I introduced phpMyAdmin. In this, we will deal with installation and configuration of phpMyAdmin.

UPDATE: This installation manual is for the older versions on phpMyAdmin. To see how to install the latest version, see the post Installing phpMyAdmin 2.8

My aim is to create a tool that could be used to administer your database in a development server. These directions are NOT for a production server. You will need much more security when installing phpMyAdmin on a production server. A good source for information on how to install phpMyAdmin securely is the series 'Doing more with phpMyAdmin'.

Installation phpMyAdmin

Get the latest version of phpMyAdmin from phpMyAdmin.net. The files will compressed - so you will have to extract it.

Create a folder called 'phpMyAdmin' in the document root of your server and extract the PHP scripts into it. That's it - the installing part is over.

Configuring phpMyAdmin

Necessary Information

Now we have to configure it - before starting this, make sure you have the following details...

• Database Server address
• Database Username
• Database Password

For the sake of example I am going to assume that the following values...

• Server : 'localhost'
• Username : 'root'
• Password : ''

Using the 'root' user with an empty password is one of the worst security blunders you can make - but what the hell, we are on a development server, right?

Editing 'config.inc.php'

Open up the file 'config.inc.php' in your favorite editor and edit the following values...

$cfg['PmaAbsoluteUri'] = 'http://localhost/phpMyAdmin/';

This is the absolute path for your phpMyAdmin directory. If you enter this location into a browser, phpMyAdmin should show up. I will not recommend that you use 'localhost' as the domain if you are on a network and expect others to connect to this phpMyAdmin setup. You should use 'http://<YOUR IP</phpMyAdmin/' in such a case. However if you are using phpMyAdmin for just your system, localhost will do fine.

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'localhost';

This is the database server address. If you look at the following lines in the file, you will notice that there is more than one instance of this line. This is for managing more that one database server using just one phpMyAdmin. Make sure that all the other hosts are set to empty - phpMyAdmin will ignore it if it is empty.

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] = 'root';

The database user - in our case 'root'. Only the first instance of the line should be set - the other will be ignored if the 'host' option is not set.

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = '';

The password for the above given user - in this example we are using an empty password.

There are many other options - but you will not have to worry about them - they will do fine with their default values. However, if you are adventurous, feel free to experiment with the configuration options. The file well commented in detail - so you will have no trouble finding your way around - if you know a bit of PHP.

After all this is done, open up a browser and point it to http://localhost/phpMyAdmin/. If all went well, you will get the front page of phpMyAdmin.

References

• phpMyAdmin
• Installing phpMyAdmin - Official Documentation
• Doing More With phpMyAdmin - A 7 part tutorial for configuring and using phpMyAdmin

Filed Under...

• web
• development
• mysql
• phpmyadmin
• database