Simple Guide to Backing up your MySQL Database

Lesson number one: never fully trust the hardware your database is running on. If there’s ever a crash or some level of corruption you lose your data, which is bad, bad bad. How do we avert this calamity? Frequent backups – using the MySQLDump Utility.

Organizing Site Content Effectively

Below is the strategy employed by the robotics playground, which provides an array of templates to get you started on organized project documentation, fast.

MySQL Engine Wars: InnoDB vs MyISAM

This isn't a post to start the flame wars between the MyISAM and InnoDB camps, it's just a short blurb to list some facts about both and let you hash it out in the comments. For those of you not in the know, two of the widely used MySQL database engines (engines control how the data is stored and accessed) are MyISAM and InnoDB, both which have their niche. If you look this up online...

MySQL & PHP: Connecting and Transferring Data

In previous posts I’ve covered a general overview of how SQL and PHP work together and the benefits of creating dynamic content. We have discussed content management systems and how they can simplify your life as a webmaster. Now we’ll start to look at how to actually construct a content management system, starting with connecting PHP to MySQL.

Quick MySQL Reference Sheet

As promised here is a quick guide to some of the most frequently used commands in any SQL environment. You can find a more detailed description in the introduction to relational databases.

A Simple Guide to Constructing Advanced SQL Queries

Last time we defined the meaning of a database and picked apart a few examples queries from the MySQL camp. To recap, we looked at CREATE TABLE, INSERT, UPDATE, ALTER TABLE, and SELECT statements. Just to refresh your memory, they use the following syntax (abbreviated listing)...

The 8 Step Guide to Starting & Marketing Your Website

Perhaps you've been browsing the web lately and thought about starting your own site. You might have something you want to share with the world, or just want to show off your work. There's also the lucrative prospect of marketing your product via the web. A lot of beginner's guides out there only talk about how to pick out a website template...

Starting MySQL: What''s a Relational Database?

Relational databases tie data together to reduce repetition and minimize storage used. Data can be stored compactly with intelligent relationships between tables and columns. When we start exploiting the features of a properly constructed relational database, the power of the SQL language is available to us. A relational database can be defined as...

Starting MySQL: Introduction to Databases

In the last few topics I’ve been talking about these information storage repositories called databases, but what are they really? We’ll talk about SQL databases as applied to MySQL examples, but understand that the fundamental principles of databases apply to all the engines, whether you’re using SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQLlite, MySQL, or some other variant...

What''s in a Content Mangement System?

've been losely referring to content management systems (CMS) and how amazing and magical they are. But what IS a CMS and what's involved with using one? Wikipedia gives a great definition: A content management system (CMS) is a computer application used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized...

Page Caching with MySQL and PHP

briefly mentioned about the server "caching" pages between MySQL and PHP via the CMS I employ. So what is this caching thing? Well, it's actually a pretty cool and really smart way of handling data. In the old days, when most pages were static and coded by hand, a user would visit a website, their browser would request the page from the server, the server would return the page, it would get downloaded, and the browser would...

PHP and MySQL Content Management System

The backend for DanShope.com is a custom grown content management system (CMS) I wrote in PHP and SQL. A CMS is designed to allow simple yet powerful management of content across a site - blogging software is a common CMS a lot of people are familar with. A good CMS will abstract the physical content or meat of a page away from the HTML source code...

To OpenID or not to OpenID?

Today I looked at becoming an OpenID provider. For those of you not familiar with the technology, it's a decentralized standard for digital identities. What that boils down to is the ability for you to create a login at one place and use it across many web spaces...