MySQL Intro
What is MySQL?
MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database management system. MySQL is a relational database management system that runs on a web server or a dedicated database server on more complex setups.
What can you do with MySQL?
- You can create small blogs with MySQL and Large Enterprise websites with MySQL.
- Databases are used to store information like Articles, User Information, Orders and more
- MySQL uses standard SQL
- You can create database tables that store information that can be referenced from another database table as part of a database design
- MySQL databases can be queried with a server side coding language like PHP, Python or Node.js amongst others
How to use MySQL for local web development
It’s recommended that you develop locally to ensure your code and database is coded securely. You will need to have a local web server that has MySQL included and often a tool like phpMyAdmin which provides you a graphical user interface to view your various databases, tables etc.
You can use a free web server called MAMP which is compatible with both Windows and MacOS. I highly recommend it and in the video below, I show you how to use MAMP for WordPress Development but it’s also what’s used for regular server side development as well.
How to use MySQL for your Website?
The good news is that most hosting companies include the full LAMP Stack which stands for:
- Linux as the operating system
- Apache for the web server
- MySQL for the database
- PHP as the server side scripting language.
If you’re using a VPS or dedicated server, then you might need to manually install the LAMP stack but fortunately that’s an easy task. Just make sure to follow the steps in your hosting companies documentation guides.