Introduction and Installation - Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 for Effective MySQL Management - page 5

Required information
Some host providers offer an integrated web panel where we can manage accounts,
including MySQL accounts, and also a file manager that can be used to upload web
content. Depending on this, the mechanism we use to transfer phpMyAdmin to
our webspace will vary. We will need some specific information (listed below)
before starting the installation:

• The web server's name or address. Here, we will assume it to be

www.mydomain.com .
Our web server's account information (username, password). This

•

information will be used either for FTP or SFTP transfer, SSH login,
or web control panel login.
The MySQL server's name or address. Often, this is • localhost , which means

that it is located on the same machine as the web server. We will assume this
to be mysql.mydomain.com .
Our MySQL server's account information (username, password). •

System requirements
The up-to-date requirements for a specific phpMyAdmin version are always
stated in the accompanying Documentation.html . For phpMyAdmin 3.1, the
minimum PHP version required is PHP 5.2 with session support and the Standard
PHP Library ( SPL ). Moreover, the web server must have access to a MySQL
server (version 5.0 or later)—either locally or on a remote machine. It is strongly
recommended that the PHP mcrypt extension be present for improved performance
in cookie authentication mode (more on this in Chapter 2). In fact, on a 64-bit server,
this extension is required.

On the browser side, cookie support must be activated, whatever authentication
mode we use.

Downloading the files
There are various files available in the Download section of
http://www.phpmyadmin.net . There might be more than one version offered here
and it is always a good idea to download the latest stable version. We only need to
download one file, which works regardless of the platform (browser, web server,
MySQL, or PHP version). For version 3.1, there are two groups of iles— english
and all-languages . If we need only the English interface, we can download a file
containing "english"—for example, phpMyAdmin-3.1.0-english.zip . On the
other hand, if we have the need for at least one other language, a choice containing
"all-languages" would be appropriate.