Over Viewing the Interface - Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management - page 46

The database names can contain MySQL wildcard characters such as _ and % . These
wildcard characters are described at http:/ /dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/
en/account-names.html . If an array is used to specify many databases, they will be
displayed on the interface in the same order they are listed in the array.
Another feature of only_db is that you can use it not to restrict the list, but instead
to put emphasis on certain names that will be displayed on top of the list. Here, the
myspecial database name will appear first, followed by all other names:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['only_db'] = array('myspecial', '*');
We can also indicate which database names must be hidden with the hide_db
parameter. It contains a regular expression ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Regular_expression ) representing what to exclude. If we do not want users to see
any database whose name begins with 'secret' , we would use:
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['hide_db'] = '^secret';
These parameters apply to all users for this server-specific configuration.
These mechanisms do not replace the MySQL privilege system. Users'
rights on other databases still apply, but they cannot use phpMyAdmin's
navigation panel to reach their other databases or tables.
Deactivating Ajax
Certain pages are using Asynchronous JavaScript to improve user experience. We can
deactivate this behavior by setting $cfg['AjaxEnable'] to false ; in this case, the
pages for which a non-Ajax behavior has been programmed, will cease using Ajax,
performing a full refresh instead. This may be perceived by the user as less fluid.
Character sets and collations
A character set describes how symbols for a specific language or dialect are encoded.
A collation contains rules to compare and sort the characters of a character set. The
character set used to store our data may be different from the one used to display it,
leading to data discrepancies. Thus, a need to transform the data arises.
Since MySQL 4.1.x, the MySQL server does the character recoding work for us.
Also, MySQL enables us to indicate the character set and collation for each database,
each table, and even each field. A default character set for a database applies to each
of its tables, unless it is overridden at the table level. The same principle applies to
every column.