Databases

What is a database?
According to Wikipedia:

A database is an organized collection of data. The data is typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality (for example,   the availability of rooms in hotels), in a way that supports processes requiring this information (for example, finding a hotel with vacancies).

This example may not seem sensible immediately to what you are doing with the Domain of One's Own initiative, but it actually goes pretty far in describing how databases work for web-based applications like the ones you have been experimenting with thus far. For example, when you install an application like WordPress two things happen: 1) a series of core files that run the application are installed into a directory on your server, and 2) a database is created that those files will systemically write information to, store it in, and then retrieve it from. In fact, the database acts as the warehouse of data that you enter into a particular application. For example, when you add a post to your blog, that content is stored within a table of the applications database, and is dynamically retrieved when someone tries to access that post from a specified URL.

Moreover, the data within the database is often broken down into tables wherein the data is organized according to specific kinds of data. For example, one table within a WordPress database is the wp_posts table that contains columns of data that is broken up relevant to the data contained within that data. For example, the wp_posts table would have contain post titles, post content, post author, etc.

Accessing a database
An important point here in terms of the Domain of One's Own initiative is that the data you create is controlled by you. It is on your slice of a shared server that you manage, and you have access to all of that data. Below we will take you through the process of how to access a database on your server.

1. First things first, login into your web hosting space on UMW Domains here. From there access the Websites and Domains tab and look for the Databases link.



2. Once you click on the databases link, you will have a list of your databases for the applications you have installed. If you have only installed one application there will be one database, two applications there will be two databases, etc. In the example below you will see there are three separate databases I can access, knowing which one to access is half the battle (you'll notice the prefix is the name of the application (i.e. wordpress) and the suffix is the unique name for that particular installation (wordpress_6d).



3. Once you click on the database you want to administer, you will need to click on the Webadmin icon so that you can access the various tables of data within the database.



4. Once you click Webadmin, you will be in an application called phpMyAdmin that is a human interface (do not nearly as human as WordPress :) ) that allows you to administer your data, with spaces for editing these values. In the example below, the illustration points out the wp_posts table that is the space that you can access to see the content you created through WordPress for all of your posts, i.e., post title, post content, post author, etc.



5. Once you click on the wp_posts table in the phpMyAdmin you have access to edit each of the post elements, anything from the title, content, author, timestamp, etc. And while you can do this far more intuitively within the the WordPress application itself, it is important to get a sense of how that actual mechanism for writing, storing, and retrieving data from these web-based applications work.